The previous Wrong Read looked at best ball win rates as a function of age and experience. The surprising finding is that at almost every position, younger and less experienced players underperform. Two factors combine to make this the case. First, the optionality profile of best ball leagues makes them less ideal for players with a wide range of outcomes than traditional redraft leagues. If you can’t replace underperforming players, then you don’t benefit as readily from outperformers. Second, best ball players fail to recognize the first factor at play, and therefore overdraft young players.^[1]The data in the table below displays the difference between FFPC redraft and best ball ADP for the month of August 2020. The data in all other tables is from Fanball best ball leagues between 2015 and 2020.

Nevertheless, previous research has shown that rookie RBs often make for good best ball picks, especially if you get them in the right range. And moreover, avoiding rookies even at other positions would mean you miss out on the Justin Jeffersons, Brandon Aiyuks, and Justin Herberts of the fantasy universe. We want some exposure to these explosive outcomes. Do we have to simply get it in other formats? Or is there a way to benefit from the extreme upside some rookies display in best ball leagues?

How to Draft Upside Without Taking Unnecessary Risks

The final table in the previous installment looked at median win rates by experience.

What this tells us is that most players underperform early in their careers — in fact QBs and RBs never return a median win rate above the expected 8.3% in their first eight years in the league. WRs appear to in Year 5, but then drop back below the threshold. TEs meet the mark in Year 7.

What this really tells us that most players underperform across the board, and that you do need to find some outliers in order to win your best ball league. Examining average win rates instead of median win rates better accounts for those outliers.

The key thing to notice from this table is that no rookies appear to be good picks in best ball — the only rookies who even approach an average win rate are RBs. The main difference here is the prevalence of rookie winners at RB compared to other positions.

The chances of finding a winning player among rookie RBs is slightly higher than at other positions, but the difference becomes even more stark when we look at teams finishing in the top half of their leagues.

In many ways, the top-six percentages are more instructive, because they indicate which teams had a shot at a win, even if luck wasn’t on their side. While exploiting the edges you can find in the Roster Construction Explorers gives you a good chance at a top finish, you still need some luck to actually take down a league. Looking at top-six percentages better isolates the effects of those edges from the effects of luck. What we see above is that RB is the only position at which even 30% of rookies provide an above-average top-six percentage.

Furthermore, the table indicates that while the number of rookie league winners available at other positions is pretty close to the number of rookie RB league winners, the number of safe rookies at other positions lags far behind safe rookie RBs. This further confirms that the optionality profile of best ball leagues is not well suited to heavy investment in rookies generally, with the notable exception of rookie RBs. The downside of drafting a lot of rookies at other positions is too great and too difficult to overcome.

Again, this becomes more clear if we look at median team points scored.

Among rookies, only RBs have a median team point total above 2,200. However, it still looks as though rookie RBs underperform veteran RBs for the most part. Should we just avoid rookies altogether in best ball leagues? Not at all; rather, since we must approach best ball teams as we would long stock positions, value is key.

You Can Draft Rookies in Best Ball