Litfin: Saratoga pick three play for Sunday, July 27

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Heavy morning rain has washed all scheduled turf races to a muddy main track and helped produce 46 scratches off the program.

I try to make it a practice to avoid multi-race exotics whenever there are maiden races with first-time starters buried in the sequence as blind items, and that is the case with today’s pick five and early pick four, where race 3 is smack dab in the middle of everything and features several well-connected juvenile fillies making their debuts, including an uncoupled pair from Todd Pletcher.

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Now that race 4 is transformed from 1 3/8 miles on turf to 1 1/8 miles in the mud, the second-time starter Shopping Spree becomes much more interesting to me. He has been gelded since his debut chasing the well-regarded Pletcher 3-year-old Tiz Dark, and breaks from the rail with blinkers on for Nick Zito, whose runners have been live early at the meet.

Shopping Spree has something of a Saratoga pedigree, too, as his dam, Miss Shop, won the Personal Ensign here, and she in turn is a half-sister to Trappe Shot, who was nosed in the A.G. Vanderbilt a few years back.

So the plan is to use wise-guy price play Shopping Spree and dirt-only entrants Aslan and Lunar Rover to kick off a “caveman” pick three on races 4-5-6 as follows:

Race 4: Aslan, Lunar Rover, Shopping Spree
Race 5: Allie Sweet, Darnley Bay, Lotsa Noodles, Swakopmund
Race 6: Charitable, Dyker Beach, Mack Miller, Scare City

It’s 3 x 4 x 4 for 48 combinations.