Just noticed this on my first real glance through the card. Odd placement to be sure, no?

9th (3:53) James W. Murphy S.

1 Mile (Turf) | Open | 3 Year Olds Stakes | Purse: $100,000

1 Easy Crossing Dominguez R A 116 L
2 Skyring Rosario J 116 L
3 Lemon Juice Franklin M 116 LA
4 Going to Market Karamanos H A 116 LA
5 Shkspeare Shaliyah Solis A 122 LA
6 Mr. Handsome Rodriguez E D 116 L
7 Done Talking Russell S 122 LA
8 Two Months Rent Pimentel J 116 LA
9 Hammers Terror Nakatani C S 116 LA
10 Gold Megillah Velazquez J R 116 LA
11 Adirondack King Castellano J J 116 LA
12 Achilles Lezcano J 116

I scratched my head when I saw that. If you're wheeling back in two weeks, why not try the Preakness?

Smith said he'd try the grass after derby.

I'm all for trying grass, but there are lots of options out there for 3YO's to give the lawn a shot: why squeeze him into a race on two weeks rest?

My assumption is he wants to be involved in the biggest race day of the year in Maryland. Given the fact he's a local guy I guess that would be the rationale.

loss
for
words



-bt-

Damn, I would have went to Pimlico if I knew that BT was the Kegasus.

The first four legs of this Pick 5 are absolutely brutal.

Not only can I not find anything even close to a single in any of them ... I'm also having a lot of trouble eliminating horses.

It's very annoying to me. Like one potential landmine after another.

Sometimes a card can be "too good" when the main attraction is a multi-win bet like the pick 5.

Hands down, this is Matts best work evah.

I like Pretension to give value to the exotics and based upon what I've seen here I probably am the only one in the world to think that.

I think he's probably the 3rd best New York bred in the race.

That's a safe bet.

I don't want to sound like Alan but shouldn't they have the scratches uo an hour before post time?

Matt, can we get the Mr. Thomas shirt on this?

I just got them off of Twinspires, so it might be an Equibase issue.

Thanks Nick, usually Equibase has them first.

It Preakness day dude those first 4 legs will probably be won by 3 favorites.

It's a very slow track based on what we saw in the first dirt race today.

Solid starter alw males -- the 4 length winner had run figures of 77-88-82-76-80-78 in his last six starts.

They went 25 for the first quarter and the 8.5f race broke 1:46 for the final time.

Unless some work is done on the track -- the fractions and especially the final time will be very slow this year no matter what.

Based on that race -- a 1:50 flat for 9 furlongs on this track would be about a 108 Beyer type race.