Aqueduct handicapping roundup: Week of Dec. 21

Jacobson doing it with numbers

For horseplayers, job No. 1 since racing shifted to Aqueduct, first on the main track and now after one shortened week on the inner dirt, has been to take all of the entrants from trainer David Jacobson’s barn (there are plenty of them) into account each day and then decide what to do with them. It’s not always as easy a job as it may seem. They are usually either starting directly off of a trainer change, often from another part of the country, or are taking a significant drop in class, or both. Here are some numbers to help put things in perspective: During the main-track portion of the Aqueduct fall meeting, which covered racing from Nov. 1 through Dec. 8, or 26 days of racing (there were two cancellations in there), Jacobson sent out an astonishing 107 runners, compared with Todd Pletcher, who saddled the second-most starters with 69. From those 107 starts, Jacobson led all trainers with 25 wins; next in line was Rudy Rodriguez, who got 18 winners from his 58 starters.

If you think that running all of those horses on the main track would have left the Jacobson barn depleted, think again. Through the first four days of racing on the inner dirt, he had started 26 horses, winning with seven of those, and had six more runners entered for the canceled Dec. 15 program. Jacobson had seven horses slated to go last Wednesday, nine on Thursday, and four more for Friday.

For those of us betting the races it isn’t simply a matter of sheer numbers, it’s about evaluating all of the different variables concerning Jacobson’s runners and then deciding which ones are worth taking a shot against and which aren’t.

First, the ones that have underperformed. Of the 133 Aqueduct runners noted above, 56 of them (42 percent) have been sent off at odds of 2-1 or lower, with 13 being odds-on favorites. If you’ve been betting those odds-on Jacobson favorites, all of which were either exiting a strong win or taking a drop in class, you haven’t been doing very well as they have compiled a less-than-impressive 3 for 13 record. His longer-priced starters haven’t necessarily taken up the slack, with horses sent off at odds of 8-1 or higher (the longest price of any Jacobson runner has been 44-1) 0 for 18.

On the other hand, horses making their first start for the barn, either via the claim box or private purchase, have gone 12 for 37 (32 percent), and are posting a healthy return on investment. Included among those wins are a stakes victory by Candyman E and a 103 Beyer blowout by Moments No Tiz, who then returned to be beaten at odds-on in his next start.

Be particularly watchful of horses dropping in claiming price in their first start after being claimed by Jacobson. Of those 12 winners making a first start out of the barn, eight of them were off the claim, and seven of those were entered back for a lower claiming price than they were taken for. The lone winning exception was Candyman E, who was taken for $62,000 and returned to win the $98,000 Spooky Mulder Stakes.

Despite the number of runners coming from Jacobson’s barn every racing day it pays to remember that, ultimately, playing the horses is about evaluating the relative abilities and form of the competitors, and then making decisions about them, with betting value as your final guide. There are many more Jacobson horses to evaluate right now, but they are still performing at almost exactly their expected level overall when compared to a much larger five-year sample of dirt starters from the barn:

Current Aqueduct run: 32-133, 24 percent, $1.90 ROI (median payoff $5.90);

Past five years: 474-2004, 24 percent, $1.80 ROI (median payoff $6).