TGJB: "Did the Foster before I left, Mineshaft is aptly named, as he ran the lowest number we have ever given out. It was ridiculously fast, and probably the straw that broke this camel's back, and I plan to add several points (probably 5) to the database sometime soon."

Easy Goer:
I was hoping for more discussion about this. Why not just let the scale continue to slide downwards without the torniquet intervention to stop the bleeding? Maybe the figs get low enough, and some hot shot rocket scientist lends a hand to shore the system up? Sure you have looked into it, but sometimes a fresh look at things is all it takes to find a hint of the missing link. Weight correction, pace correction, turf-to-dirt switches...? Even if you're 40% confident the drift is due to track maintenance and medicine, why shift your arbitrary reference point, and lose contact with your past? Let's face it, the negative sign now used to denote turf could just as easily be switched to a T inside a circle or square, and the negative sign could then be used for the truly negative numbers.
All in all, I'm having a hard time swallowing this database shift when you and your disciples have been touting the beauty of how 'tight the numbers fit'. It's troubling that the Beyers don't seem to be drifting - I do not know how the Rags are drifting, but I would like to hear some neutral observations, if there really are some non-partisans out there.
I hope you still have an open mind, just as you did when you left the sheets to form TG because you felt you had to mix art and science to find the truth; you didn't want to be a slave to algorithms when a meaningful statistical sample was not available. (Please correct where I may have mispoke through sheer ignorance.)
I'm sure you have already struggled with these issues, and I would like to hear some of answers and rationale you came up with to deal with it.