michigan cup sunday

We'll wrap up a busy four race weekend with another 312 mile Cup Series race at Michigan. For some reason, Draft Kings continues to release salaries before the Saturday race so we've got some very mispriced place differential plays with the guys who finished poorly on Saturday. That ends up making most of a good cash game lineup for us and should lead to some real chalky plays on Sunday.

• Cole Custer, Austin Dillon and Rickey Stenhouse all showed easy Top 20 speed on Saturday but had something go wrong in the last 10 laps to ruin their day.
  • Custer was 16th in green flag speed and had an average running position of 17th on Saturday. He cut a tire with less than 10 laps to go (he tweeted that he got put into the wall - didn't say by whom - which caused the tire to go down) while running in the Top 20. He will be in a backup and starting from the rear on Sunday, but his official starting spot is already 34th so that really doesn't matter.
  • Austin Dillon was 17th in both green flag speed and average running position on Saturday. He got tangled up with Christopher Bell with about 5 laps to go and got heavy damage from the wall and collisions with Ryan Newman and Michael McDowell. He finished 31st. Again, he will probably be in a backup starting from the rear but being scored from 31st.
  • Stenhouse was 12th in green flag speed and 14th in average running position Saturday. He got a flat tire on the last overtime restart and went from a Top 12 finish all the way back to 32nd as the last car on the lead lap. NBC never showed what happened, so I don't know if this will be a backup or not. At those speeds, a flat tire can do a ton of damage but I don't even know how fast Stenhouse got going before he realized it was down.
• Ryan Newman, Michael McDowell and John Hunter Nemechek are other guys who offer position difference upside at reasonable salaries.
  • To me, something seems off with Newman right now and he's the most expensive of this group. He was only 29th in green flag speed with an average running position of 25th on Saturday. He was involved in the Bell, Dillon, McDowell incident late in the race and fell back further because of damage from that crash. He'll probably be in a back up car starting from the rear (but keeping his 28th starting spot for fantasy scoring purposes).
  • McDowell was doing fine until the incident we just talked about. He was 24th in green flag speed with an average running position of 26th on Saturday. McDowell will probably be in a back up Sunday as well.
  • Nemechek got spun by Chris Buescher on Lap 94 and never seemed to recover. He got several flat tires and spun out several additional times after that. He's the riskiest of this group, but also has the most upside starting 36th. He was actually 21st in green flag speed on Saturday, which was just faster than Bubba Wallace, who finished 9th.
• As far as the big guns go, Kevin Harvick seems like a must play kind of guy after his performance on Saturday. He was the best in green flag speed, average running position, laps led and fastest laps. Anyway you want to look at it, he was the best on Saturday. And he'll have the #1 pit stall and position difference upside starting from 20th on Sunday.
  • The numbers show Denny Hamlin had the next best car on Saturday. He was 2nd in green flag speed, had the 2nd best average running position and had the 2nd most fastest laps. Also, as I talk more about below, Denny has really done well on the back half of these back-to-back races. In three of those races this year, he's finished 1st (Darlington), 2nd (Charlotte) and 1st (Pocono).
  • I also really like Ryan Blaney at under $10k. He was 3rd in green flag speed on Saturday. He had some unconventional pit strategies that helped at times and hurt at others. His salary should be over $10k.
  • You can't go wrong with other guys like Martin Truex, Brad Keselowski and possibly Kyle Busch. If you like them better, fire away. I lean slightly to the guys I'm mentioning here but that doesn't mean I don't like all of those guys as well.
• As more tournament or contrarian plays, I like Eric Jones, Alex Bowman and Kurt Busch.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that I went back and looked at how the teams have done in other "double header" situations since the season resumed. We had back-to-back races at Darlington, Charlotte and a true double header weekend at Pocono not too long ago. I figure that looking at this could help tell us what teams are doing the best at making the overnight adjustments needed to improve their result in the second race of a back-to-back situation. Four guys stood out:

• Hamlin -- Finished 1st at Darlington 2, 2nd at Charlotte 2, and 1st at Pocono 2.
• Harvick -- 3rd at Darlington 2, 10th at Charlotte 2 (but with 63 laps led and 37 fastest laps), and 2nd at Pocono 2.
• Chase Elliott -- He got wrecked at the end of Darlington 2, but was running 2nd and had 28 laps led and 14 fastest laps. He had the best car that night. He finished 1st at Charlotte 2 and 4th at Pocono 2.
• William Byron -- He improved from the first to second race in all three back-to-back races. At Darlington, he was 35th and then 12th. At Charlotte, he was 21st and then 12th. And at Pocono, he was 14th and then 7th. It makes sense to think Chad Knaus would be one of the better crew chiefs at setting up the car to be better in race two. It will be tough to move up from his 7th starting spot on Sunday -- especially since he was only 18th in green flag speed on Saturday -- but he might be worth a dart throw in multi-entry tournaments.