McGee: Gulfstream Park pick three for Sunday, Feb. 19

While trying to leverage a strong opinion on a horse in the third race Sunday at Gulfstream, I tried to come up with an early pick five (races 1-5) but found both the fourth and fifth races absolutely confounding. Go ahead and extend this opening pick three into those races if you’ve got a solid opinion, but I felt the best way to maximize my play was to land squarely on HERR DROSSELMEYER in race 3.

Trained by Dane Kobiskie, who through his nine-year career has a 21 percent win rate and more than 500 wins, Herr Drosselmeyer surely needed his last race when leading most of the way in a virtually identical maiden-$12,500 sprint.

With that race under him, Kobiskie runs him right back 11 days later, normally a promising sign that a horse bounced out of its race in great shape. He seems like real value, assuming we can get the 3-1 morning line being promised; he’s the outside speed, assuming he can outrun Blue Xanadu to the turn, and that should allow Alberto Delgado some options. And don’t let Delgado’s poor stats worry you – he’s an Eclipse Award winner (1982 apprentice) who was the original jockey for the great California Chrome. He’s eminently capable given the best horse.

We’ll try to get alive with the likeliest winners in the opening double. ELUSIVE MILLION (3) and CONQUEST BABAYAGA (6) both tower over the others in race 1, the lone allowance on the 12-race card, while SASSY SIERRA (3) adds blinkers as a twice-beaten favorite and GUANTANAMERA (7) draws favorably while likely to show big speed going from turf to dirt in race 2.

This is the straight-A play:
R1 – 3, 6
R2 – 3, 7
R3 – 5
$1 ticket = $4