1. Right now there's 6 'first balls'

Alpha, DT, OMB, jig, BDL and mex can all reasonably be considered 1st balls. They are talented enough to win a championship as the best player on a majors team. But clearly there's levels to their carry ball capacity. Could mex go for 86 TCs and win a Super? Probably not but Alpha just did. Will captains panic if they miss out on the first few 1st balls and overspend? What will captains do if they don't get one of these top 6 players? In s37 my strategy was to ignore all the big TC players and build a squad with no below average majors players. Could a team of d0pe, rina, button and bbb win a championship this season? Maybe... Or would you feel better having DT + 3 low TC balls and hope you get a steal or two. Much to think about... But I think there's a clear drop off after the top 4 and then another drop off after the top 6. And then a drop off around 20...

2. The "Comebackers"

Sleepers often determine which teams succeed and which fail. And those coming back to TagPro after a break are the biggest sleepers of them all. First there's Anze (is his signup even real?). Sugar, Sif, BTY, Turbo, Corbeh, omar, kl, RKT. And to a lesser extent: bbb, ft, DAD., DudeMcGuy, Vader, Carrrrl, accel etc. You kinda know how talented these players are, but you don't know if you are going to get a locked in version or not. Or if they are rusty af and will be terrible.

3. The Mercurial Personalities

There's too many players with mercurial personalities to list them all. But many players will threaten to quit, not show up to scrims, not play well and generally be a locker room cancer if they aren't in the 'perfect' situation. You usually can have one Draymond Green type per team but there's certainly more than 8 Draymond Green type's that will play majors this season. What happens when you start doubling up on unstable personalities? Do captains just say fuck it and ignore fit and start drafting for talent? Will a less talented player get drafted early (or called up) just to try to fix a disastrous chemistry situation?

4. The Ping conversation

This season there's an extra, unique data point for captains to reference on mltp.gg. It's their ping. I tested it out… It's kind of hard to fool even if you use a vpn. I was setting my vpn to sweden and it was still reading 65 for me. Obviously you can fool it, but I think you can reasonably rely on it. jig, phreak, rina, dad, dude, bam, omni all likely have higher ping than the average player. Meanwhile Alpha, Messi, DT, Button, ft, mtr, vader, sadness, taurus, selfy all have ideal ping. Does it matter? Not really... jig has been smoking people on high ping for years but it might be a tie breaker if you are thinking of drafting between 2 players.

5. The Snauction conversation

I am probably the biggest Snauction fan in the world. Yes it is kind of intimidating for captains to trust your own personal big board and bid on 'best player available' every time instead of on specific players. But I firmly believe it protects players that are normal humans (like fly and fender). Players like that who are willing to not be complete assholes and will act like adults and be willing to create gamelinks and send it to the other team and what not. These types aren't going to get overdrafted (as badly) in a snuaction draft. It also helps even the playing field overall. Chuggo won't be as big of a steal if we are 20 draft picks in and he's clearly the most talented player left on the big board... But yes it is a worse system if you are wanting to target individual players only (but that's a bad captain strat if you do that).

6. 4th Ball thoughts

Frequently majors 4th balls make or break a championship team. There's players that clearly have the mechs to be in majors (think hz, taurus, hue, bty, carrl etc). But there's a big difference between being being the best tagpro player on a team and being the worst tagpro player on a team. It kinda goes back to my 'roles' write up. It's really hard to be a 'Spark' type player in Majors. Your competition is like OMB and Jig. So often those type of players are asked to fill a role they aren't really familiar with or good at. There's a reason Sadness has played a shit ton of majors minutes despite having worse mechs than many of the players I listed above.

7. Final Thoughts

We're still several weeks from the actual draft. It's likely that some top players decide to remove their signups. It's also likely that some other top players decide to signup last minute. Currently captains have more information than they've ever had. But more data points can sometimes lead to more confusion. Outside of guessing correctly on which 3rd/4th ball level player is going to randomly perform like an MVB I think fit and team chemistry will decide s40.