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Originally Posted by ArlJim78
I actually completely disagree with this. I see no value in betting Street Sense in that he is sure to be an underlay. He should have won the Jim Dandy with plenty in reserve almost without asking. However I counted 13 cracks of the whip and a lot of action from Calvin to get by CP West who didn't ever go away. I have this theory that this is not his preferred set-up for a peak performance and by that I mean he does well with a solid pace and perhaps bigger fields, with a smallish field and moderate pace he doesn't have the explosiveness. That and the oddities about each and every one of his trips make me just a bit sceptical.
The big thing in his favor is that this race didn't attract any monsters or real up and comers, so it should be his for the taking. I'm looking hard at this Grasshopper, need to check out his tg# from the last race.
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To me this is the key point. I think that even if everything you say is true, and this is not his "preferred set-up for a peak performance," he will almost certainly win anyway against these. If Curlin or AGS was here, that would obviously be a different story. At 10f, I don't think he needs anywhere near his peak performance to win this particular race.
On top of that, I'm not sure that we won't see a peak performance out of him. His Jim Dandy was his first back off a layoff and was clearly not the race the barn was pointing towards. Although talk of barns getting their horse to peak for specific races is generally incredibly overblown, this one seems to do very well when they are gunning for a particular race as they are here.
My larger point was that I often think people get locked in to trying to "beat" all odds-on favorites. While this can be a good
general principle, not all odds-on favorites are created equally. If a horse is 3/5 or 4/5 and should be 1/5....there is some value there. As far as I am concerned Street Sense falls into this range. Say he goes off at 3/5 and Grasshopper goes off at 8/1. To me there is more value in Street Sense than in a horse making his stakes debut, and his 10f debut, in a G1 race with a horse like Street Sense. Could Grasshopper win? Sure. But I would put the odds on that happening at about 20/1.