McGee: Pimlico pick four play for Saturday, May 18, 2019
With a $2 million guaranteed pool for the late pick-4 ending with the Preakness (races 10-13), why wouldn’t you take a crack? With seemingly vulnerable favorites in most of these races, this sure seems like a good opportunity to spread accordingly while taking stands against the relatively untested Preamble in the Chick Lang (R11), the come-backing Catholic Boy in the Dixie (R12), and the winless-at-3 Improbable in the Preakness (R13). For what it’s worth, this same pick-4 sequence last year handled more than $2.3 million when chalking out ($21.90 for a 50-cent winner ending with Justify).
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I’ll start this play by relying on the power of Chad in the Gallorette (R10) and going deeper after that. Here’s the layout (pre-scratches):
Race 10: This race lands squarely in the Chad Brown wheelhouse, with Inflexibility (2) and Barkaa (9) both returning from layoffs following some serious a.m. regrouping from the reigning 3-time Eclipse-winning trainer, who shows a gaudy 29 percent win strike with 180+-day returnees. Moreover, it’s not the toughest group of opponents.
Race 11: I’ll only use Preamble (8) as protection, thinking he’s liable to trip out perfectly from his outer box with Geroux aboard. But Malpais (3) might just have more quicks, even out of a 7-furlong race, and Confessor (9) can loom a race-long danger on a good trip at a blow-up number.
Race 12: Will protect by using Catholic Boy (12), who finds a demanding spot after being away six-plus months, and his similarly classy next-gate neighbor Inspector Lynley (11), while secretly hoping for a bigger mutuel than what either of them would provide. Those pricey alternates are Just Howard (2), Admission Office (3), Have At It (5), Phlash Phelps (8), and O Dionysus (10).
Race 13: With all due respect to Bob Baffert, Improbable doesn’t exactly look like the best horse he’s brought to Pimlico from the Kentucky Derby, and therefore the compulsion is to try to beat him. My top picks are Anothertwistafate (12) and Win Win Win (13), but I’ll also use War of Will (1), Bourbon War (2), and Owendale (5) in trying to hit a nice lick.
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Here’s the straight-A ticket:
R10: 2, 9
R11: 3, 8, 9
R12: 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12
R13: 1, 2, 5, 12, 13
50-cent ticket = $105