Watchmaker: How I'd play Saratoga on Thursday, Aug. 14

After a very wet Wednesday, the good news for Saratoga on Thursday is that all turf races are scheduled to remain on the turf, and conditions have turned cool, breezy, and relatively dry, which is optimal for drying the racing surfaces.

The bad news is the track starts off as muddy, and you have to be imaginative to find some meat on this card. Of the nine flat races, two have only 5betting interests, one has 6, two have 7, and only one has more than 8. And program scratches were not a big factor in this.

Compounding the bad news is there are two 2-year-old maiden races, going as the fifth and sixth races, which are hidden for pick five and early pick four purposes. Yes, one of the eight first-time starters in the fifth race will have to be able to run to beat The Lewis Dinner. And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that if the Todd Pletcher-trained Blofeld doesn’t win the fifth, then El Kabeir is the one most likely to deny him.

The point is, if you’re inclined to play the pick five and early pick four, you are still dealing with a back end of a sequence that has one race with eight first-time starters, and another race where all five left in the race are firsters. This kind of race scheduling is a disservice to multi-race exotics players, and in a mini-form of protest, I’m sitting out the pick five and early pick four today.

That means if I want to get involved, it will have to be late in the card. My main position of the day is in the last race, and concerns The Big Deluxe and Bug Juice. I needed The Big Deluxe to hold on last time, but he was nailed by Noble Cornerstone. However, Noble Cornerstone is a 3-year-old who has really turned a corner, and looks like a stakes-class New York-bred, and The Big Deluxe is the speed of this field.

Bug Juice would move way up if there is still moisture in the track, as he does seem demonstrably better on wet surfaces. I’ll focus on those two, and work backward constructing a late pick four play with the hope of getting alive to them.