David Patent wrote:
>
> Looks like it is time to revisit an interesting discussion
> Jerry and I had two years ago regarding the 'variant'
> question -- Rags vs. TG.
>
> While I will admit that there will never be a true and final
> answer as to who whether TG or Rag have it right, my
> preference is to use factual data for my variant as opposed
> to one's personal assumptions so that my numbers make a nice
> clean line.
>
> Cases in point: Jerry's post today. Let's take each point
> in order:
>
> 1) Magic Weisner. First, a correction. Rag does not have
> his pre-Preakness race as being a 9 point move from his 2
> y.o. year. The move was 6 points, which makes a huge
> difference in how you would read his line going into the
> Preakness. The 3" off of the 6" is thus surprising (I
> thought the horse was a toss at 45:1) but not totally
> shocking, given the generally explosive line that MW
> exhibited previously.
>
> Additionally, to claim that Ragozin's Delaware Valley numbers
> are systematically too slow is absolutely false. I cannot
> count the number of times I have bet Laurel and Pimlico
> runners at NY tracks because they had faster numbers than the
> NY horses but were underbet b/c they came from MD.
>
> 2) The winner in the first race at Pimlico. She was not much
> of a stretch at all on the Rag sheets. She had already run a
> 9 sprinting and my experience with Rag sheets is that fillies
> who just badly x'd off of a distance that they are not
> particularly strong at often come back and run around 0 to 2
> points off of their top. I personally thought that the race
> was unplayable given the odds.
>
> 3) The two grass races. You have got to be kidding! There
> is not a single number in race 5 that is at all surprising.
> The field was a bunch of first time grassers and horses
> coming off tops. The winner ran back to his second best
> number and the bounce candidates bounced a few points. Also,
> wet grass courses always produce a lot of x's simply because
> horses often don't like running on the soft turf. As for the
> 7th race, same analysis. The only semi-quizzical numbers
> were Watch and DeAar. However, Watch was coming off a layoff
> and had not run particularly well on a wet turf before.
> DeAar had x'd in her only prior wet turf start and had just
> run her eyeballs out three races in a row. Again, upon
> further review, no surprises.
>
> 4) The 11th race. Now, talk about dogma, Jerry!! Apparently
> it is written in THE BOOK that a horse can't bounce six
> points. First, it was not the whole field. Most of those
> horses were slow to begin with. Second, every single horse
> going into that race that had run fast in their last or
> second to last race was a horse with a high probability to
> run negatively. Tenpins didn't get his 'slow' numbers at a
> Delaware Valley track. He got them in KY. Given his jumpup
> I had him pegged to run between a 6 and a 10 (he ran an 8).
> Lightning Paces looked terrible. Tactical Side was a huge
> bounce candidate with an ugly line. Bowman's band was a bit
> of a surprise but a semi-ouchy horse coming off of a 2+
> figured to bounce 2-4 points. Lyracist was slow always.
> Ground Storm was still going backward off of his 1 (War
> Emblem fans, take note), Full Brush was slow, Grundlefoot was
> a horse running an average of 8s coming off a layoff, and
> First Amendment figured to bounce off of the 6 in his last.
>
> The bigger point here, Jerry, is where is it written that a
> bunch of ouchy older horses with bad patterns can't all 'x'?
> It happens all the time. And for you to just assert that
> it's 'ridiculous' merely unmasks you as the most dogmatic of
> all but dogmatic in a religious 'I believe it therefore it
> must be true' way instead of a 'I have looked at the evidence
> and this is how it is' way. I will take the second kind of
> Dogma any day.
>
> 5) Agree here. He looked better on your sheet but that's
> true of just about every horse who winse because that is how
> you have decided to make your numbers. You have a belief as
> to what horses can and should do and massage your variants to
> make the results fit your theory. No one can ever prove that
> wrong just like I can't prove that God didn't put the fossils
> there to fool me into thinking that the earth is billions of
> years old.
>
> 5)

I will give you credit for being one of the few raggies who will discuss these questions on the merits, although I also agree with HP that intellectual honesty should make you call the Ragozin office on their duck and delete chicken droppings.

1. You are correct—he “only” moved 6 points on Ragozin, it was 9 points to the Preakness number. He also “only” jumped 4 points in his last, from an established level. You are claiming he figured to jump (or even had a remote chance to) on Ragozin? That the line, AFTER the jump, was explosive?

Friedman, in his pre-race analysis, where he said he would toss MW and tabbed him as third worst out of 13: “Nice looking developmental line, but coming in off a 3-1/2 new top that if repeated is too slow to contend.” Not even a whisper about a new top, which is correct off their sheets.

My pre-race analysis: “Really good late development as a juvenile set this one up for a strong campaign this year, and he has done nothing wrong—in fact, since he’s only developed 2 points from his 2yo top he probably has another move in him. Problem is, he’ll need a 2 point move just to become relevant with these.” Which, of course, is exactly what happened, and the inside trip got him second. I would also point out that, numbers aside, there is a dramatic difference in the 2yo pattern, which is why we went ahead and bought the horse (he failed the vet exam).

As for the Delaware Valley question: again, everyone should look at the figures for this card on both sets, and going forward, and make their own decisions. MW and Quidnaskra are just two that stand out.

2. Not the winner, the second filly in the opener. Those races you call X’s were not stopping non-efforts, but OPEN LENGTH WINS. You figure the fillies behind her ALL X’ed even worse? Some coincidence. I’m betting they made miraculous recoveries when returned to sprints.

Again we had her last two 10 (TEN) points faster.

3. Come on, David. The 5th race was a 3 year old stake, and EVERYONE in the field ran at least 2 points off their TOP. Again, in a 3yo stake. Are you kidding me? When you handicapped that race, with 4 horses having tops of 10 or better on Ragozin, you thought a 13 would win it? Please. The first 3 finishers all ran at least 3 points off their tops. How does the race look if you take off 3 points?

In the 7th, another stake, the whole field gets figures averaging about 5 points off their tops. The winner gets only 2 points off her top, BECAUSE RAGOZIN DIDN’T GIVE HER CREDIT FOR HER PREVIOUS DELAWARE VALLEY EFFORTS---HE HAD HER TOO SLOW. I urge you and everyone else to look at this race on TG and Ragozin, and see how the race would look if you took 3 to 5 points away from the numbers Ragozin assigned them on Preakness day.



4. You are leaving yourself wide open here. First of all, IT WAS THE WHOLE FIELD—EVERY HORSE IN A GRADED STAKE RACE, RAN AT LEAST 6 POINTS OFF THEIR TOP. When you handicapped that race, you thought an 8 would win it? Gimme a break. How’s this race look if you take off 4 points?

As for those horses who “were slow to begin with”—they ran even slower. Every horse in the field but one ran AT LEAST 6 POINTS WORSE than his previous race.

I said this to you once before, David—horses do crazy things all the time, but GROUPS of horses don’t. That’s the whole theory behind projection style figures, that previous figures can be used to project today’s variant, the system used by TG, Ragozin, Beyer, Time-Form, and every serious figure maker. Beyond that, in this era of sports medicine horses are even more likely than before to run well, and this was a GRADED STAKE—WITH EVERY HORSE BUT ONE COMING IN ON AT LEAST 4 WEEKS REST.

Ragozin has the track much faster for this race than for the previous route (6th race) to tie it to the Preakness (I have it at the same variant as the 6th, changing afterward). Ask yourself this—if the card had ended after the Schaefer, what figures would Ragozin have assigned it?

By the way—why do you suppose Friedman only posted the first 12 races? Why don’t you ask them to post the 13th, in the name of intellectual honesty?

5. “He looked better on your sheets, but that’s true of just about every horse that wins because that is how you have decided to make your numbers.”

That is one hell of an admission (that the winners look better), so thank you. Now:

A. Are you saying we fudge earlier numbers after subsequent races to make the winners look good? If so, someone would have noticed by now—if not, and the winners look better on TG, that should be really, really important information.

B. When we gave WE that first 1 (Ragozin gave him a 9) it represented a 7 point new top on our figures. Yet I gave it to him—because he earned it. By your reasoning, I never could have given him that number, since it didn’t fit with his previous figures. Horses do crazy things all the time—groups of horses don’t. It’s the underlying premise.

Again, I urge everyone seriously interested in figures or in making a decision as to which to use to carefully examine both the TG and Ragozin sheets for Preakness day. And I really hope they post the 13th race.



TGJB