Hersh: Saratoga pick four play for Saturday

While I like several horses on the July 19 card, the races fell in such a way that leveraging those opinions in pick-whatevers was difficult. In the end, I settled for a late pick four on races 8-11.

Races 8 and 9 are absolutely torturous. Obviously, I want as much coverage as possible, particularly in race 8, where there ought to be – seriously – about eight horses clustered between 5-1 and 10-1. It’s just a crazily competitive N1X turf-route allowance, and my one hope is just to survive and move on, which is why there are 10 horses on the ticket.

Race 9 is not much easier. The horse who has shown the most, Battle Force, hasn’t raced since April 2013, and things only get murkier from there. Nonetheless, I’ll use Battle Force and just two others as A’s and three more B’s, leaving out three in the field’s main body whom I actively don’t like.

There is a flip side to these skullbusters: The winner of both races will not be short-priced nor widely singled, and the hope is to get to the much narrower part of the ticket with a couple of decent-priced winners on the board.

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I’m banking on Strathnaver repeating her Just a Game or Stephanie’s Kitten rebounding to her better 2013 form (she’s ripe for it now, especially with her bandwagon having emptied); those are the A’s, and Alterite, who has to be respected, but also probably is rusty, is the B.

All Included looked like a budding star when he was switched to grass last out at Belmont in his third career start. No other horse in this N1X allowance has shown such brilliance, and I think he stands a strong chance of running right back to that performance. The 5-2 morning-line price seems high, but if it’s close to accurate, perhaps he won’t be as widely used as a single in this sequence as I think he should be.