a couple thoughts on pletcher:
1) it might be a little early to say his horses aren't running this weekend. he had 4 entries in the BC races. I didn't like bashart, and the 13-post didn't help him. Verrazano had some traffic issues and, as the analyst noted, Verrazano does not handle any kind of traffic. in the distaff, princess of sylmar is a closer and, obviously, the track was playing STRONGLY to speed today. and authenticity ran fairly well. all that said, i'm not necessarily disagreeing. his horses didn't run well last year in the BC either. but i'm not quite ready to toss his horses yet.
2) i'm really on the fence when it comes to how clean pletcher is. on one hand, his horses run huge numbers at gulfstream and monmouth. on the other hand, he has great success in ny. nyra has some of the strictest testing in the country. I can't say with any certainly that his horses are running clean, but i'd say he easily has more to lose than any trainer in the country if he was ever caught doping his horses.
back to the handicapping. I have 6 more races to 'cap for tomorrow. so far I have done a poor job adjusting to this speed track, but through the first 3 dirt races tomorrow, I like a lot of frontrunners.
