In this week's P.O. Box:

Pretty much every time I’ve streamed a best ball draft this offseason, I’ve received some form of this question:

I am a sick pup, but not sick enough to stream all 150 Best Ball Mania drafts again.

If I had infinite amounts of time, I actually would do it again. Not only did I get to draft with lots of smart people throughout the experiment, but it also allowed me to build out a very diverse portfolio on a team-level (something Sackreligious recently illuminated as an important consideration).

But this summer I want to free up time to make more videos on the Deposit Kingdom channel and dive into the expanded offerings in the Underdog lobby:

My most recent video is a step-by-step guide on how to attack Best Ball Mania V, the world’s biggest season-long fantasy tournament, which is set to drop shortly after the NFL Draft completes this weekend.

BBM is a unique beast because it spans 4+ months. There have been lots of debates over the years are when is the optimal time to draft in the contest.

In researching this video, I came to this conclusion:

When you draft doesn’t matter, but how you draft during the unique drafting windows does.

In other words, the strategies we should be employing when the contest opens are much different than the strategic edges we should be pushing in August when the contest is about to close.

But the perfect draft can come at any time:

To help keep us on track for pushing the right strategies at the right time, I created what is basically a roadmap for drafting throughout the summer with month-by-month strategy tips that coincide with specific events on the NFL draft calendar:

Early feedback has been great and it’ll be fun to put the early strategies into practice when BBM drops.

We’ll be firing up a mega version of Best Ball Breakfast on Monday to kick off the launch of BBMV. Pat Kerrane, Shawn Siegele, and my guys from The Club—Andy & Clay—will all be swinging by to draft BBM teams with me, so feel free to call in sick.

And then we’ll really be off to the races. Can’t wait.

🚢 Round 1 NFL Draft Watch Party. We went nearly 5 hours last night reacting to every pick, including the hilariously dumb Michael Penix Jr. pick by the Falcons that shook us all to our core. Tons of immediate best ball and dynasty fallout discussion in here.

☣ How Much Should You Diversify In Best Ball? This week on LOLz we preview best ball summer, updates to the Draft Caddy, and thoughts on portfolio diversification.

😆 The Dude Who Won Millions Playing Best Ball…and didn’t tell anyone.

☕ Best Ball Breakfast: BBM Prep & Big Board Exposure Review. Also explained why we need to be careful when applying descriptive data as gospel for future drafts.

👨‍🌾 Elon Fell For My Engagement Farming Trap. Sucker.

🏆 Fantasy Life roundup. This week I previewed the NFL draft and shared my favorite bets/predictions for Round 1 (shout out Xavier Worthy). I’ll be writing special Saturday and Sunday editions this week, so make sure you are subscribed:

⏰ The Definitive Mock Draft Contest. We try to predict the landing spot for all of the relevant rookies (spoiler: check out those Ricky Persall & Xavier Legette Ws).

💪 Swolecast “Draft" “Preview” “Show”. The episode where David Kitchen tries to pretend he did better in a best ball contest last year than he actually did.

🚂 Book #7 for April (30%): Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

Finally underway here. Because it is both super meta and a sequel, it took me a second to get my bearings, but I’m now really enjoying it.

The inside baseball jabs at the literary world have been particularly fun:

It’s also worth mentioning that now is when staying on track with the Book Club gets tricky (I’m slightly behind pace on this April book with my parents in town all last week, but we’ll make it). The goal was to establish some really strong habits before Draft Szn really picked up. I think I’ve done that, but they are now going to get stress tested in a big way.

I’m even behind on picking out May selections, which I will get to this weekend. I’ll be sure to post them in the #book-club channel in the Deposit Kingdom when I decide, otherwise I’ll share them in next week’s newsletter.

✅ Book #6 for April (COMPLETE): The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson
✅ Book #5 for March (COMPLETE): Recursion by Blake Crouch
✅ Book #4 for March (COMPLETE): The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
✅ Book #3 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters
✅ Book #2 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
✅ Book #1 in Jan. (COMPLETE): Clear Thinking by Shane Parris

A few of you asked for a review of my Omakase experience from last weekend. It was very fun, and featured 20-courses of nigiri, sashimi, and a couple cooked items (the wagyu melted in my mouth). We were seated at the bar overlooking the chefs so we were able to watch them prepare most of the sushi dishes.

There wasn’t a bite I didn’t love, so it’s tough to single out any one dish. This bluefin tuna (Maguro) was up there, though:

Every course was paired with either a wine or a sake and they were nice enough to swap me in one Japanese whiskey pairing as well:

All in all, a great experience and a nice salve for Japan wanderlust.

We got one show on tap this weekend before Best Ball Breakfast on Monday…

Saturday on Best Ball After Dark (9pm ET) we’ll catch up with Neumy (Underdog, The Badge Bros) and preview best ball summmer. Become a YT member to watch live (top 2 tiers).

Need more newslettering? Check out the Fantasy Life newsletter I write regularly: