There's been a lot of talk on here lately about the importance of upside, so I'm going to give my thoughts in this thread. First of all, I agree that upside is crucial. So, knowing that, how do you define upside? What percentile outcome is a player's upside?

I've seen James White referenced as a player who lacks upside a lot. In 2018, White had 259.7 PPR points in Weeks 1-16 and finished as the RB8 (RB10 by PPG). He didn't need superhuman efficiency to do that either; he was seventh in expected points and 12th in expected PPG.

Going into 2019, the @RotoViz Range of Outcomes App (which finds similar historical seasons and looks at their Year N+1) had White's 75th percentile outcome 12th among RBs. The RoA App isn't perfect, but this at least shows that an analytical method believed White had upside.

White is going as the RB36 right now in @Fanball best ball drafts. We've seen him be an RB1 on RB1 volume before (on a team that had better weapons that could take targets away from him). What more can you realistically expect from an RB going that late?

Back to the original question: How should we define upside? What percentile outcome is that? Do you only have upside if three-down workhorse is in your range of outcomes? I'm curious to hear what other people think about this.