Hersh: Santa Anita Pick Four Play for Sunday, October 19

It’s a tough sequence, but we’ll try the late pick 4 on the Santa Anita card for Sunday, Oct. 19. Two turf sprints, a straight 2-year-old dirt maiden sprint, and the mother of all crappy $20,000 maiden-claimers to end the sequence.

Race 6

DAYRABI (#3) from France appears to like firm going, which lends hope that his potential class edge will be made manifest in his first US start. STREET ICON (#5) is 1-1 on the downhill course and has a nice pressing style, though the odd barn change raises at least an orange flag. Those are the two As, but we’ll back up with a couple Bs and a C.

Race 7

I made ASCENT (#10) a DRF Gameplan Playbook play because he appears to be working strongly for his career debut and he’s one of the few true dirt-sprint bred horses in the field. His dam’s sire, Allen’s Prospect, should add brilliance to solid (if turf-slanty) More than Ready on the sire side, and I like an outside draw for a first-timer. Still, the sharp dirt works for WINDY FORECAST (#4) make me bump him to an A on the decent chance he’ll prefer dirt to synthetic, and I want plenty of coverage here in the B & C department.

Race 8

GANGNAM GUY’s (#2) pair of downhill turf runs last winter stand out in this field, and if he gets back to them, he wins. Freshened with fast works, so I’m banking lone-A status that he bounces right back into that same form. Just a couple C backups here, and this is the take-a-stand leg of the sequence.

Race 9

Even with a fairly short field it’s as inscrutable a race as one could imagine, and not because there are so many horses that can win, but because no one seems capable. I took what look like the three most obvious of the maidens, TURN ON (#2), PUSH GIRL (#7) and SOUTHERN OWAH (#8) and will hope for the best. Deeper pockets would use all the others at least in a C capacity, because really, anything could happen here.

Here’s the ticket on DRF’s invaluable Ticketmaker: