Actually, this race raises and an interesting, albeit potentially explosive, question. The question is -- How does one know when an aberration is something that can be a strong indicator of an underlying hidden truth and relied on versus when an aberration can be viewed as a sui generis event that can be disregarded? Let me give better context to explain.

The reason Two Sixty Four looked so good on the numbers was that his mid-Atlantic figures (including a beautiful pattern) were clearly superior to the NYRA figs assigned to the other contenders. I recall years ago that there was a lot of criticism directed towards TGJB's mid-Atlantic numbers suggesting that he was giving absurdly high figs to clearly inferior horses on those circuits.

Fast forward to this year's Breeders Cup and there were allegations made that Ragozin's figures were flawed because e.g. Grade 1 quality figures were handed out in a midweek low level allowance at Del Mar or that all the horses in the Super Derby ran faster than all the horses in the Jockey Club Gold Cup (I know this is an exaggeration, but you get my point).

To me, a user of both Thorograph and Ragozin, this sort of debate is interesting. When I use the figs (whichever ones), what I am looking for is an edge. It is just the sort of edge I want when something comes out looking starkly different than what would be expected under conventional thought. In other words, I really like it when I find an unusally strong number in a place you would not expect or an unusually weak number in a race that would be expected to be strong.

However, I do also recognize that sometimes what looks aberrational might actually end up being aberrational (which is not necessarily troubling in the short term because, if one bets the way I do, one can take some losses because the playable prices do not require that they be hit all the time to be profitable). So, we come back to my question which is -- how do you know when something that appears aberrational is not aberrational but rather a good indicator of a hidden truth?

I put this question to JB because he has been on both sides of the question -- He has had to defend his own figures against claims of being off the reservation and he has also made allegations about others' figures being off the reservation. Now, I already know the answer is going to be that if you work with all the figures and lots of horses you will see that everything has to fit together somehow and if you change one number, you have to change all in the same race which ends up having a ripple effect so you need to find the right place to put a number to make all your evidence work. However, I wonder if there is some way to understand better about particular aberrations on the day you are confronted with them. For example, lets take the famous allowance race before the Illinois Derby by War Emblem. When you looked at WE's sheet for the Illinois Derby, you needed to figure out what to do with that number. Maybe you say to yourself the young three year olds do tend to jump up and that sort of jump up happens so you embrace it (if I recall, he had been in Chicago and then wintered at the Fair Grounds -- sometimes the wintering in the warmer climes wiht maturity and development can with time stimulate a young colt who may have been having problems to jump up). With the mid-week allowance at Del Mar, I do not know anything but maybe the nature of the race and the horses in the race can tell you whether a jump up could have been embraced or rather viewed with suspicion. As for Two Sixty Four, I think you could feel good about his numbers, he was regularly running competively, his pattern was nice, in the race under examination was running against a bunch of NY Breds, so the relatively weak numbers they had compared to him could be explained by their running within the same weak group of horses. An interesting test (especially if this is the last few days before 5 points get added) would be to scan the data base for negative numbers. Were any of these run in claiming races? I know I have seen 1s or 2s run in claiming races. Then, looking at some of those cases, it would be interesting to see if there are or were reasons to say some were true indicators and others were one time aberrations to be ignored.

Anyway, sorry to potentially rip open a nicely scabbing sore.