Draft Kings Mid-Cap Productivity ($6.9k-$8k)

Value is found in different ways.

The five-most expensive drivers in the field earned the most points on average and there were some great values among those commanding salary caps of $8,000 to $10,000, but with Draft Kings set so that the median amount spent on a driver is $8,333, it was impossible not to reach down to the next level.

This week, we will look at the next nine drivers in terms of expense and evaluate their season. These drivers commanded an average cap of $6,900 to $8,000.

All nine drivers at this level earned top-10 points during the season.

Led by William Byron and Daniel Suarez with 12 top-10 points days, they were closely followed by Ryan Newman and Alex Bowman with 11 each. Matt DiBenedetto came on strong at the end of the season and earned top-10 points eight times.

The remaining four drivers in Group C were less productive overall, but if you caught Chris Buescher (5 top-10 earnings) or Austin Dillon (4) on the right weekend, they were a good value. Paul Menard and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. were top-10 earners only twice.

Byron earned only the third-most points among this group, but he was arguably the best value in the second half of the season. Beginning with Camping World 400 at Chicagoland, Byron was one of the top-10 values nine times in the last 20 races and many of his strong runs came in pairs so that players who were able to identify that momentum, capitalized on it.

Further underscoring his predictability, Byron earned top-five points on five occasions: three of these came on flat tracks and another was on the Charlotte road course that many believe behaves similarly to the minimally-banked courses. His best two races netted 67 points at Pocono in July and 75.5 at Martinsville in October.

Byron was rarely a bad value at this level. The average points earned among Group B drivers was 29.4 and Byron was better than that in 22 of the 36 races.

Newman was a top 10 value on 11 occasions in 2019 and like Byron, he almost never disappointed. He earned 30 or more points 24 times in 36 races and was a top-five value five times. Never ranked better than fourth, he earned the most points at Kentucky (65.25) followed by Martinsville (64.5), Richmond (61) and Talladega (60.5), giving him a wide range of courses on which he ran well.

In part because of his consistency and the fact that he was in the negative only once (at Kansas in October because of an accident), Newman scored the most points in Group C with 1,272. With an average salary cap of $7,603, it cost $215.38 per point to have him on the roster, which was the best among these drivers.

DiBenedetto turned his season around with a fourth-place finish at Sonoma. That also began a string of strong runs in the Draft Kings game as he earned top-10 points in seven of the next fourteen races. The best thing about DiBenedetto was that it took a while for his salary cap to catch up to his value. At Sonoma he cost players $6,500 and he didn’t break the $7k barrier until nine weeks later at Darlington.

In the Southern 500, DiBenedetto was the fifth-highest points’ earner and from that point on he stayed above the $7k mark, but he continued to help players win their contests and ended the season with a cost-per-point ratio of $227.00.

Buescher might not have earned top-10 points as often as some of the others at this level, but he had one of the best cost-per-point ratios with $228.66. A big part of the reason for that was consistency. In addition to his five top-10 days, Buescher earned 15th-best or more on 14 occasions. That meant he was never very far from the leaders.

Equally important, Buescher was strongest on the unrestricted, intermediate speedways were dark horses are hard to find. His four best points’ days came at Atlanta (56.5), Charlotte (55), Kentucky (49) and Michigan (46).

Next week we will take a look at the bargain basement drivers and determine who was worth starting with an average price tag of less than $6,400.

2019 Draft Kings High-Cap Productivity 
2019 Draft Kings Mid-Cap Productivity ($8k-$10k)