Some questions on fig methodology…

Jerry, you’ve been pointing out what you see as implausible #s on Rags leading up to the BC. Whether you’re right about those specific figs or not, I’m not in position to comment since I’m on sabbatical from serious horseplaying -- the BC was only the second race card I’ve handicapped all year. (maybe I should do that every year – less fun, but the ROI would be wonderful)

Anyway, your arguments against those Rag figs sounded reasonable enough to honestly give me pause, but then came a race like the Distaff, won by Shug’s filly by an acre, a few races after a colt broke a rein and was pulled up. Got me thinking...

Pleasant Home surely got a new top, probably a big new top, no? Or did the field collapse behind her? Both a rest-of-field collapse and a big new top? How can we tell? On Rags, almost the whole field had iffy to bad patterns, but the winner was forward moving in general. Problem (for me) was that she had short rest coming off a top – I didn’t play her.

OK, back to your fig methodology… Imagine for a minute that Pleasant Home broke a rein coming out of the gate and was pulled up. If the rest of the field ran poorly, as the runaway winner may make things appear on your figs, how would you have known without the runaway winner?

You argued in your pre-BC posts something like 'how could a horse get a worse figure destroying a top GR I field than someone else did running second in a lowly allowance field?' Well, if Shug's filly were pulled up early in the race, that would have still left 12 of America’s top fillies & mares, all pointed for the richest race of the season... so wouldn’t you have been in the position of needing to infer some change of track speed so that the “winner” (in real life, the filly who actually ran 2nd) would get a better fig -- the decent fig it takes to defeat a field of America’s top females? Or would the absence of Pleasant Home not made any difference in the # you assigned for others in the race?

I’m genuinely interested in your response – I know these issues aren’t easy, you’ve thought a lot about this, you score plenty using your figs, and I’m sure there are plenty of times you are right about changing track speed. Slides, I’d bet happen often. But jump shifts without weather/maintenance shifts… well, let’s see your response.

Jerry, sorry you had a rough day – and I’m glad at least some of your customers had a good one. At least on BC days, there’s more than enough in the pools for all of us.

Best,
SP