After drafting countless teams, testing out rankings, and analyzing what our opponents are doing in drafts, I feel like I’ve finally honed in on my preferred MLB Best Ball Strategy for Underdog Fantasy tournaments in 2024.

 

I would say the strategy has 4 main pillars:

 

1. Zero Pitcher
2. Mid Tier OF Fade
3. Stack It Up
4. Scroll Down

 

2024 MLB Best Ball Strategy on Underdog Fantasy

 

 

Primarily Zero Pitcher

 

What is Zero Pitcher? If you’re coming from the fantasy football world, you would probably best relate it to the “Zero RB” strategy. But it’s mostly pretty straightforward. I am waiting a bit longer on pitcher, and sometimes waiting VERY long while loading up on the elite hitters. This is for a few reasons. First, I think the market is generally a bit more efficient when it comes to hitter pricing and not as much with pitching, so I can take advantage of these inefficiencies at pitcher in the mid to late rounds and create an overall stronger lineup. Also, hitters score more points. Spencer Strider, the best pitcher in fantasy baseball, scored less than 1,400 points on Underdog last year. The best hitter in fantasy baseball, Ronald Acuna, scored 2,132 points. Heck, Adley Rutschman, a rookie catcher nearly scored as many points as Strider.

 

Clearly there’s more to consider than just raw points, but when we combine just how many raw points the highest scoring hitters produce with the fact that the market is more efficient for hitters, that allows us to pair the highest scoring players (top end hitters) with undervalued pitchers who score much closer to the top end pitchers than their draft cost would dictate. A lot of that has to do with the scoring on Underdog, which I’m not sure the market has fully wrapped it’s head around:

 

 

The scoring is very basic. No negatives for hits or walks, and a big premium on getting the Win + Quality start. The big edge that the aces have in fantasy baseball is not just strikeouts and wins, but it’s often in their ability to limit hits and walks far better than the ‘lesser’ pitchers. But in this scoring system, that element is a non-factor. Being able to limit hits and walks can help you pitch more innings, as well as get more wins and quality starts, but it’s just very difficult to separate from the pack at pitcher, even if you are as good as someone like Spencer Strider. Which doesn’t even take into account the element of 2 start weeks.  These ‘lesser’ pitchers can outscore the stud pitchers, especially with this scoring structure,  if they have 2 starts compared to 1. Obviously,  if Strider has a 2 start week in the finals, that’s an unfortunate break, but we can still make up for it by having a higher quantity of pitchers, which gives us a greater shot at 2 start weeks in any given week, combined with superstar hitters who can help bridge that gap as well.

 

And it’s even more difficult for those guys to separate because of the market inefficiency I mentioned before. I understand strikeouts are not absolutely everything, but they gain you an extra 3 points over a groundout or flyout. That’s 4 points vs. 1. With no walks or hits included, and the sheer randomness/variance of wins and quality starts, strikeouts really are king.  And yet super talented strikeout pitchers are drafted far below countless other pitchers. There are pitchers who are quite talented with high end strikeout rates going in the mid rounds or even super late, and you can see them in our Underdog Rankings.

 

Finally, we start a lot more hitters in our starting lineup. On Underdog, your starting lineup consists of 3 Pitchers,  3 Infielders,  3 Outfielders and 1 Flex Hitter. 70% of our starting lineup is made up of hitters.

 

So, most of our starting lineup is hitters. Hitters score a lot more points. The scoring is tougher for elite pitchers to separate. And the market is bad at pricing pitchers in the mid to late areas of the draft. Makes sense, right?

 

Fading the Mid Tier OF

 

Drafters on Underdog have appropriately identified the premise of positional scarcity as it relates to outfielders. Ignoring the DH, each MLB team only plays 3 OF every day. They play 5 IF. Once you factor in platoon situations and a small percentage of players who are just un-draftable, the OF pool definitely get depleted more quickly than the other positions.

 

So we’ve seen drafters pull up the better OF options very high in ADP. It makes sense logically, but we have to take a step back and remember that we are playing a game against thousands of other teams. We are trying to navigate our way to the top of these tournaments with tens of thousands of entries in them. If we just fall in line and draft the exact “optimal” way, we’ll just be drafting the exact same as everyone else.

 

And while hitting is more efficiently priced than pitching, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. ADP in MLB Best Ball is definitely far from perfect. Generally speaking, it’s pretty heavily reliant upon projections, which are very heavily reliant upon games played. That means some talented hitters who are maybe not completely locked into a full set of games played (whether that be due to platoon risk, depth on the roster, youth, etc) are naturally going to be cheaper than their per game or per at bat production. Plus, you’ll always get a bit cheaper prices on unproven players. Rookies and youthful players can easily flame out, and their range of outcomes is very wide. But that’s actually what we want in a game like Best Ball. If you have a narrow range of outcomes, you’re almost assuredly appropriately priced, and there’s not a lot of upside to really exceed your draft cost.

 

And the thing is, I think a lot of those guys who are also OF have gotten really priced up in to this mid tier of OF. The superstar OF in the first and 2nd round are a different story. All those top 10-12 OF are studs and the best hitters in baseball. But fairly quickly in drafts, we get to a range of Bryan Reynolds, Luis Robert, Michael Harris, Nolan Jones, George Springer and so on. It’s not that those guys don’t have merit or aren’t good players. They definitely are.

 

They are just priced next to hitters who are a) flat out better hitters by basically any metric, and b) are almost always going to score a lot more fantasy points. Bryan Reynolds is a very good player, but he projects for a 114 wRC+ using the Bat X while scoring 2.0 fantasy points per plate appearance in 2023. Jose Altuve goes nearly a round later and he projects for a 122 wRC+ while scoring 2.4 fantasy points per plate appearance last year. That’s a drastically better hitter and fantasy producer going a round later because of this positional scarcity.

 

Even a guy I like, but agree is very high risk and polarizing, Elly De La Cruz scored 2.15 points per plate appearance in 2023. He did that while being terrible in terms of real life value with an 84 wRC+!

 

George Springer, with his ADP of 46 and turning 35 years old in September, scored 1.88 fantasy points per plate appearance in 2023. A similarly aged infielder who goes after Springer, Paul Goldschmidt, had a ‘down’ year as well, and he still scored 2.03 fantasy points plate appearance.

 

When you consider the fact that these guys are having 600+ plate appearances over a season, that is a massive difference in scoring output. So for me, I’m looking to draft the superstar OF very early, and then move away from this “Outfield Dead Zone” that we have created this season and draft the higher scoring players in the infield. Then, I can come back and take shots on the wider range of outcomes OF options a little later with the guys with some playing time concerns, platoon worry, or just uncertainty from rookies youth.

 

Stacking

 

Stacking is always a bit of a polarizing conversation in Best Ball, but I think it’s fairly straightforward for MLB here. We have established that hitters score the most points. We know that it’s a weekly game, particularly when it comes to the championship round. So if I can draft a player who is in the same offense as another player I have drafted WITHOUT leaping into a higher tier of hitter, I am going to do that.

 

That final part is crucially important. We know that there are a few benefits to correlating our hitters. In any individual game, the hitters can gather extra points by being on the same offense and getting on base next to each, driving each other in, etc. Over an entire season, hitters on the same offense can have a 2023 Braves-esque effect where the offense performs at a high level collectively over the entire season and we are getting additional value from multiple picks simply by them being on that offense. And in any week, but particularly the playoff weeks, we can benefit from an ideal pitching matchup or hitting environment/park/weather with multiple spots in our lineup. Sometimes that correlation can even drag along a low owned player into the finals where they pop up for a big week to bring us home all the money.

 

But as I said, that final part is hugely important. We want to make sure we are not sacrificing upside, point scoring, leverage or any other advantageous variable by forcing in a correlated player. You don’t need to jam in Bryson Stott ahead of IF who you have ranked tiers ahead of Stott simply because you drafted Trea Turner and Nick Castellanos. But if we reach a tier where Stott is similar to all the other IF, then that’s a great way to break a tie within a tier.

 

P.S. – I like the idea of stacking pitchers with my hitters when it makes sense as well. If your Braves stack goes off in the finals to score a bunch of runs, it can give Chris Sale a better shot at the win, and maybe even a quality start if the Braves feel they can let him out there with a big lead.

 

P.S.S. – I also like the idea of stacking multiple pitchers from the same team on my best ball roster. Most weeks 1 pitcher from a given team will have a 2 start week. Sometimes 2. I can give myself a much higher probability of 2 starts from one of my pitchers by having multiple members of that rotation on the roster. I don’t think I want to do more than 3, however, so that I don’t limit my potential upside for this 2 start premise which isn’t a guarantee.

 

Scroll Down

 

If you’ve been around Spike Week and played NFL Best Ball, you have probably heard about this one plenty. But in MLB Best Ball, I think it’s even more important. The market is just not as efficient in MLB. I have Core Picks for 2024 that are barely even getting drafted (although I did see my guy DL Hall go 155th overall in a draft earlier today LOL). You’ll see a bunch of guys who are not drafted in every single draft being ranked in the top 200 of our rankings.

 

Don’t be so attached to ADP beyond the top 12-14 rounds or so, and definitely don’t be tied to it in the last 2 rounds. The market has no idea what it’s doing with the late round picks, so don’t lean on the market for your picks there. This is the spot where we can guarantee ourselves leverage in these tournaments. You can find pitchers who are only being drafted in 20% of drafts, which ultimately guarantees they won’t be popular if you happen to make the final. Imagine drafting a breakout pitcher who is guaranteed to be low owned in the finals, getting there, and then he has a 2 start week?

 

That sounds a little more fun than drafting Marcus Storman and his 20% K rate in the AL East.