Best Ball Fantasy Strategy: Why You Should Draft in Early May

Last week we discussed how to leverage early best ball drafts.

In this week’s article, we will talk about optimal times to draft, how to leverage the next two weeks in fantasy tournaments, and why the next two weeks are a key window if you plan to draft in volume in best ball tournaments.

Best Ball Fantasy Football: Everything You Need to Know

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What are the advantages and disadvantages of drafting early?

The biggest advantage is the opportunity for players we draft in the later rounds to rise up ADP boards due to either surprisingly good play or, more importantly, through player injury.

The downside is having full teams is important for the playoff weeks in best ball, and teams drafted early average two to three fewer available players for the tournament weeks.

Drafting later is better, but we are dealing with very small sample sizes with these types of tournaments. Also, every year is different.

Why does drafting early make sense?

It would be foolish to avoid early drafting completely based on last year’s numbers for a few reasons:

  1. We really didn’t have early injuries last year. Historically, however, we do get them, so the benefits of drafting early didn’t play out to a full extent last year.
  2. Drafting is a skill. Like any skill, practicing and using that skill helps us to stay ready and on top of ADP movements.
  3. It is fun to draft, and I want to do it early even if it isn’t ideal. However, I want to pick my times and come up with a plan of how much exposure to have each month.
  4. We are now heading into an almost three-month period where the information we have isn’t going to change much.
  5. Last and most importantly, looking at win rates by month doesn’t account for advantages that can be gained in smaller windows within a month, especially the window over the next two weeks.

Benefits of drafting best ball teams in early May

June and July I call the dead zone because there isn’t news so we tend to get a lot of “fake news” that moves ADP, but ADP generally settles.

The two-week period after the draft affords us an opportunity to both be early and different which is a key differentiator.

Win rates and the number of available players were all pretty flat with a slight edge given to May over June and July.

I believe this edge is due in part to the fact that it takes about two weeks for ADP to settle, and in that two-week window we have a great opportunity to leverage situations if we think through them properly.

They say the race doesn’t go to the swift, but in best ball it is those who do the hard work of analyzing the quickest who are the ones who gain the biggest edge as I showed with my early best ball article last week.

I plan to draft pretty heavily in this window to take advantage of that.

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