 | Track Index |  |
| | | • Aqueduct Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Beulah Park Mon, Feb 6, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Wed, Feb 1, 2012 • Charles Town Races Tue, Feb 7, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Delta Wed, Feb 8, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Fair Grounds Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Golden Gate Fields Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Gulfstream Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Laurel Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 Wed, Feb 1, 2012 • Los Alamitos Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Sun, Jan 29, 2012 Sat, Jan 28, 2012 • Oaklawn Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 Sun, Jan 29, 2012 • Parx Racing Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Tue, Jan 31, 2012 Mon, Jan 30, 2012 • Penn National Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 Sat, Jan 28, 2012 • Portland Meadows Mon, Feb 6, 2012 Wed, Feb 1, 2012 Mon, Jan 30, 2012 Wed, Jan 25, 2012 • Sam Houston Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Mon, Jan 30, 2012 Sun, Jan 29, 2012 • Santa Anita Sun, Feb 5, 2012 Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 • Tampa Bay Downs Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Thu, Feb 2, 2012 Wed, Feb 1, 2012 • Turf Paradise Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Tue, Jan 31, 2012 Mon, Jan 30, 2012 • Turfway Park Sat, Feb 4, 2012 Fri, Feb 3, 2012 Sun, Jan 29, 2012 Sat, Jan 28, 2012
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FROM JANUARY 2012 NEWSLETTER ISSUE
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| USING GOOGLE TO FIND DETAIL INFORMATION ON edbain.com | BY: SUSAN SWEENEY BAIN
Statistics are included and accepted as a primary analysis tool in all sports except for horse racing, where for some unknown reason this information is labeled a secondary handicapping factor. When you listen to any professional game, baseball, basketball, football, golf and even tennis, the announcers are consistently rattling off statistics. The Boston Red Sox’s retain Bill James, who they call the wizard. From a CBS news 2008 article that can be read at the following link the article states:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/27/60minutes/main3974752.shtml
We offer a brief escape from the economic gloom: a different numbers game - the numbers used to conjure up winners - otherwise known as baseball.
It's a pastime that has an almost religious belief in statistics. Find the right permutations and you can be a master of the universe, or at least of the diamond.
Which brings us to Bill James, the wizard hired by the Boston Red Sox six years ago who helped bring a congenital loser two World Series championships after 86 years of drought.
Recently we watched a movie called MONEYBALL that is a story about an x-ballplayer and now General Manager of the Oakland A’s Billy Beane, who used statistics to form an extraordinary team that won 20 games in a row. While he was building the team he was discouraged by his peers who went as far as to say that these statistical decisions would be the end of his career and that he’d soon be working as a store clerk. Instead Beane went against the grain, stuck with his belief in the statistics. At the end of his first season of putting players in the positions the stats said to place them, John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox recognized what Beane had accomplished and he offered him a salary of $12,500,000 to manage his team.
When I was watching the story of Beane, I felt as if I were watching the story of Ed Bain. Ed has also been told year after year that he can’t bet this way, referring to betting his stats. Ed has been tracking Layoff and Claim statistics that are based on a 4-race form cycle since the early 90s. He bet his statistics from the beginning which is how he developed his style of using the stats that he tracked and he has bet professionally since. Ed added Debut (first-time starter) and Jockey Stats to his arsenal in early 2000. In 2008 Ed published these groundbreaking color coded statistics on line in his Past Performances and added stats on the Owners as well as over 100 subsets that supply in-depth comprehensive distance, class and surface-sensitive details. In 2009 Ed added links to each of these identifiable stats so when clicked on you are taken to a detail page that lists every possible statistic associated with this person that is unlike anything available in horseracing or for that matter any sport. Sample: In August of last year Ed began offering these past performances and racing statistics for free and we’re changing to an advertising site instead of a subscription-based site. Since, we’ve been free we’ve continue to increase the number of visitors and to date we average over 110,000 unique visitors per month. We’ve had an overwhelming amount of visitors that range from players who use the statistics to handicap, to owners, trainers and jockeys viewing their stats out of interest, just to see how they look. Imagine being able to go to a website for free and see statistics on yourself. If you’re a jockey, you can see how you perform for certain trainers or what distances or surfaces you win more at. If you’re an owner, how well do you do when you have your trainer place your horse(s) at certain distances or class levels or if the trainer excels when they place your horse in various spots. If you’re a handicapper, you can use these easily to place bets or even to pass bets. If you see a lot of positives like the trainer has his "go-to jockey" and he has a 4 + 30 (Ed’s betting stat that means that a particular trainer, jockey, owner, or horse has 4 wins or more plus a 30% win rate or higher) with a particular owner and/or a 30% win rate at today’s class level, you can feel confident about your bet. You may even notice that all the stats do not line up for the win slot; however you may notice that the trainer’s number climb way up for 2nd and 3rd, then you can consider this horse in an exotic wager. Just as powerful is knowing when to pass a play. The trainer may have their lowest win rate on today’s race scenario so you can wait and catch them when they spike, when things line up with the way they train.
Offering these statistics for free has lead to a lot of questions and a lot of e-mails. One question we receive daily and I’m certain this is because our posted stats are only for the current race dates, is how can I view the stats on someone today even if they do not have a current entry? Until we went free, you were only able to view these when they were running and if you missed this and wanted information on any of these particular trainers, riders or owners, you would have to wait until they were running again. Now you can use any search engine. Google is especially easy, to basically pull up any stat on anyone in our database once you know how to enter the information that will take you right to the page with all the details. Here’s how: To locate any jockey’s stats in our database, type their name along with edbain. Example using jockey John Velazquez, type this: johnvelazquezedbain and you’ll be taken to the page that looks like our sample above. If you have a jockey with an unusual last name, it’s better to just type the last name along with edbain. As an example Julien Leparoux is in our database as J R Leparoux so if you type Julien Leparoux the stats may not show. However if you type Leparouxedbain then you’ll see Julien’s detail page. The jockeys are a little more difficult to pull up than any other stats and this is because they are often associated with certain trainers more than others. By typing their last name together with edbain also together,you can find more detailed information fast. To locate any trainer’s stats in our database, type their name and then type ed bain. Example using Bob Baffert, type this: Bob Baffert and Ed Bain and you’ll be taken to the page that has all of Baffert’s stats. Should you want to know how trainer Jamie Ness performs for Midwest Thoroughbreds, type this: Jamie Ness and Midwest Thoroughbreds and Ed Bain and you’ll be taken to Midwest Thoroughbred’s page. To locate a horse in our database, type their name and then type ed bain. The horse will show up on the trainer page of any trainer that has trained her. Example using a horse that someone wanted to know about, called Vampire Hills, type Vampire Hills and ed bain and this will take you to their trainer’s detail page. Another example of a horse that no longer runs though was recent enough for our data base is Zenyatta. To see Zenyatta’s stats, type Zenyatta and ed bain. This brings you to John Shirreff’s detail page that lists Zenyatta’s races. Currently the only way to view just the horse’s record can be done when the horse is running within the next four days. To view just their record, go towww.edbain.com and click on the track, race number and then the horse’s name (which is a link). To locate an owner in our database, type their name and then type ed bain. Let’s use David Milch, writer and creator of the new HBO Series LUCK, type David Milch and ed bain and you’ll be taken to Julio Canani’s detail page that lists two starts for this owner. Note that many owners race under duplicate names with other owners and to get details on these owners we’ve had to group them with the dominate owners in our database. A good example of this would be Jerry Hollendorfer and George Todaro. They have many runners that include additional owners too. We have them grouped in our database under Hollendorfer & Todaro so any runners that they have with this combination is counted within their stats. To locate stats on a track for a specific datethat is not available today when visiting our website, let’s use Santa Anita for Dec 31, 2011, type Santa Anita Dec 31, 2011 and ed bain and you’ll be taken to their races and Ed’s stats for this day. Ed always said that with good information we should see a lot of professional players. This is good information, and it is free so there is no reason we shouldn’t begin to see more pro players. Should you have interest in Advertising on edbain.com contact Ed at edbain@edbain.com for special introductory rates. Should you be in Advertising and your expertise is receiving Advertisers for an active website like edbain.com contact Ed at edbain@edbain.com .
For a sample of how to explore the detail page Click Here .
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THE IMPORTANCE OF RECORD KEEPING FROM MARCH 2010 NEWSLETTER ISSUE | By: Ed Bain
Susan once owned a paper packing plant back in the 90’s. She secured the contract to clean out the Chessie Railroad warehouse that is now part of Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles baseball stadium. You can see the Chessie warehouse building behind the stadium when the Orioles are on TV. When her company went in and performed the clean-up and packing of all that paper, she came across two ledgers from 1864. These ledgers were cloth bound books weighing 26 lbs on which were a manual recording of the expenditures of the C and O Railroad company. Susan decided to keep one for herself while giving the other one to her mom, and to date they’ve kept them.Each entry in this very large and heavy hard-bound ledger was recorded with a felt tip pen in an amazingly organized, detailed and orderly way. Susan’s ledger is book one and the year was 1864, during the time of the Civil War. I have taken that ledger out and gone through it many times. What struck me the most is the absolute item- by-item detail in that book. Through record keeping you can find out what you need to know about a corporation just as with record keeping I can find out everything about my bets as a horseplayer. I promote record keeping as much as I can without getting obnoxious. I understand it is difficult to do but the relationship of one item to another item is what creates purchasing power. Record keeping is an act of processing to find out the limits, nature and dimensions or scope or reason for deciding value or coming to a decision. For my record keeping I track 13 items: the date, track, trainer, statistic, percentage, class, Morning Line, odds, Win, Place, Show, bet amount and win amount.
The way I sort and evaluate my betting records is by looking at my last 100 bets. This short critical account or examination of how I have performed through each category is needed when I am losing. I may be winning and have a positive ROI but have a very low win rate, so it may seem like I am losing. I start the recording by sorting the: DATE: From January 30 to March 21, 2010, I placed 105 win bets. I won with 30 for a 29% win rate and my average win mutuel was $6.68. My Return on Investment (ROI) is 96%. I lost $0.04 cents on the dollar. During this time frame of 49 days I bet an average of 2.1 bets per day. I produced 0.60 wins a day or about a ½ win per day. When I evaluated these bets I knew that I needed to increase the bets per day and get up to five bets a day so that during these 49 days I should have produced about 245 bets. I also acknowledge that the winter months will produce fewer bets because of the number of tracks that are open plus the weather has had an effect on the tracks and consequently the number of plays per day. During this run I did not have a single day with five plays. I had six days in which I was able to place four bets. On Feb 14, Valentines Day, I had my best day. I bet four and hit three. With spring here there are more tracks opening and the clear weather should allow me to get to that five bets a day, though I know I will not be able to make up for those 140 bets I am down. TRACK: What tracks are good and what tracks are bad bets? Fair Grounds: 10 bets 6 wins 60% win rate Golden Gate: 9 bets 0 wins Gulfstream: 22 bets 4 wins 18% win rate Hawthorne: 3 bets 0 wins Santa Anita: 9 bets 4 wins 44% hit rate Turf Paradise: 11 bets 6 wins 54% hit rate Turfway: 5 bets 0 wins I placed bets on 18 tracks and the surprise from my record keeping was Golden Gate, which is one of my favorite tracks to bet because of the claiming trainers. And yet, I went 0 for 9. Only four of these bets were on claiming trainers and the other five were bets on the trainer’s Layoff and Debut stats. I need to center up on the claiming trainers and only make that kind of bet at Golden Gate. I also have to place fewer bets at Turfway and Gulfstream. I find that when I need to win I go with the Claiming trainers. I look for more of those to bet on, in order to increase my win rate and ROI. TRAINERS: I placed win bets on 64 trainers from that 105 plays. The two top trainers were: Steve Asmussen, with five bets and four wins for an 80% win rate and Jamie Ness, with seven bets and three wins for a 42% win rate. I went 0 for 4 with William Morey at Golden Gate. The adjustment I need to make is to bet more Steve Asmussen and Jamie Ness horses. William Morey is an excellent claiming trainer and two of his big stats were claims so I need to stick with him, only bet when he has a claiming stat and eliminate all other William Morey Stats as bets. STAT: Surprisingly the stats that I chose to bet came out very even with only a four- point swing from lowest to highest. Layoffs: 31 bets 9 wins a 29% hit rate Claims: 30 bets 8 wins 26% win rate Debut: 25 bets 7 wins a 28% hit rate Won Last Race: 7 bets 2 wins a 28% hit rate Various sub-sets 11 bets 4 wins 30% win rate I need to make more bets. I am choosing the correct stats to bet. PERCENTAGE: Separating by win rate percentage is an eye opener. From 30% through 34% I chose 22 horses to bet and I won one for a 4% hit rate. 9 were Maiden Special Weight. 10 were Claiming events. 3 were Allowance Optional Claims. I now know I have to be more aware of what percentage to choose and reduce the bets I make from this category of 30% to 34%. The percentages I am choosing to play are where the hole in my playing is and thus the reason why I have been down for the last 105 bets. That left 82 bets from which I won with 29, for a 35% win rate. These bets had percentages and wins that were between 35% and 83%. CLASS: Allowance Races: 6 bets 4 wins an 80% hit rate. Allowance Optional Claiming: 10 bets 2 wins a 20% win rate. Claiming: 46 bets 13 wins 28% win rate. Maiden Claim: 23 starts 9 wins a 39% win rate. Maiden Special Weights: 15 bets 2 wins a 13% win rate. Stakes: 3 bets 0 wins. My weakest plays are Allowance Optional Claims along with Maiden Special Weights and Stakes. The stakes bets may end up doing better although I try to not bet on many stakes races because more horses have a chance to win than the in the other classes. The other two categories, Allowance Optional Claiming and Maiden Special Weights, are linked to the percentage, so I can now clearly evaluate which classes and their percentages, in order to reduce the number of losing bets. MORNING LINE: The Morning Line selections can be pretty interesting because the people who make the M/L are trying to guess what the public is going to bet as the favorite. Once the betting starts the M/L is not relevant. I had one bet at 3/2 and three bets at 2/1. All were selections that I gave out on Twitter, and three won. From 5/2 to 5/1 I selected 78 plays and won with 26 for a 33% hit rate. At 6/1 and up I went 22 bets and one win a 4% win rate. I need to do a much better job with 6/1-and-up; this category is also related to the 30%-to-34% hit rate. I will be more aware of my M/L and the win rate percentage of 30%-to-34% selections. ODDS: Final odds can be very disappointing, especially when the M/L is off. I may think I have a good bet with good odds but once the betting starts it becomes just a play. 46 of my bets were bet down to 2/1 or lower and 23 won, for a 50% win rate. The average win mutuel is $4.84 58 bets were made at 5/2 and up I had 7 wins for a 12% win rate and an average win mutuel of $12.71. Overall all the 105 bets had odds that averaged out to 7/1. I have to be careful making selections with long odds and pay more attention to their percentages with long odds. I also know that this category can climb quickly and I will not make a major change in my approach with these odds. The categories that are left are Win, Place, Show, Bet Amount and Win Amount. They speak for themselves. I only reference my records when I am losing to find out if I need to change anything, and normally it is just one category. That is true of this 105-bet ledger period. My selections have to be made by reducing the number of bets I have been making with a 30% to 34% win rate while placing more bets that have a 35% win rate and higher, and that change should get me a handful of more wins and make me profitable. The weather has had a big effect on my play; more bets are needed to make a living that should happen over the next 30 days. Other than those two things I will not change my approach. Record keeping was important in 1864 and it is just as important in 2010. To Top | | | | FROM MAY 2011 NEWSLETTER ISSUE | CONCENTRATE THE 5/7, THE 5/7 | By: Ed Bain The Preakness was run at Pimlico on Saturday the 21st and this bought back old memories of my on-track playing days at the Maryland racetracks. Back then there were 3 tracks. Laurel dominated the race dates and is located about 15 or 20 miles north of the Washington Beltway. Bowie was a small old track that was very difficult to get to. There was one way in, from Route 1. This road wound its way thorough the woods and you never needed to know where the track was located, you just followed the amazingly long single lane of traffic to get there. Bowie is now closed and is used as a training track. Then there is the famous Pimlico located just outside of Baltimore, that hosts the middle leg of racing’s unofficial Triple Crown. Pimlico raced for the first time in 1870 and the first stakes they raced was won by a horse named Preakness. Three years later in 1873 they named the Preakness Stakes in this horse’s honor. That is how the Preakness got its name. The first time I went to Pimlico, I was struck by its odd shape and it’s age. It’s built out of glass, concrete and wood and that has never changed. I normally got into the track through the grandstand entrance. I’d purchase the Racing Form and a program and then continue down what felt like a dark and narrow tunnel towards the track. The floors were painted battleship gray and the walls were made of concrete. To the right side of this hallway was a line of worn wooden abandoned ticket selling stations that were there all year long for the purpose of handling the crowds for one race: The Preakness. The track was to the left side of the hallway which you could enter through glass doors that were spaced 50 or 60 feet apart. I always went through the first glass door and exited the tunnel and onto the grandstand by the far turn. The gray wooden grandstand stretched all the way to the far turn. That was my favorite part of the track, the far turn. There were wooden benches spaced evenly in a straight line, about dozen in total. I habitually got the last bench near the turn, with the one-story wooden grandstand behind me. The turn is where the real running starts and the bench was located only a few feet from the bottom of Pimlico’s really tight turns. This is where the horses fanned out for the stretch run and the ¼ mile to the finish line. Pimlico had a notorious inside speed bias for many years. I hit many exactas by just boxing the 1-2-3 post positions.
The tall large flat windowed main part of the grandstand looms over the track with an apron that has really great seats because of the views over the racetrack. As I walked toward the finish line the grandstand apron started to narrow and at the finish line it narrows down to maybe 20 to 30 feet wide, with very little standing room for the rail birds who coalesced into a small area at the finish line. Because of that position, the noise generated by the players could get really loud, with the tall grandstand behind the finish line bouncing the sound off those large windows in a small space. One time I was on the back stretch and the race went off and the loud volume coming from the finish line made me incredulous because I was so far away. Just beyond the finish line is the winners' circle. The grandstand itself was built as another oddity. When you walked inside from track side to place your bets the floor had a short level area that had overhead TVs. The floor then slants down at a fairly steep angle pushing your feet to the front of your shoes. That angle made the grand stand seem larger because of the added height. Another bank of overhead TV’s were positioned in the middle of that decline so handicappers could stand in line to purchase mutuel tickets and look over their shoulder to find out the current odds on their horse. There were always lines of handicappers 25 to 30 deep impatiently waiting to place their bets with the mutuel clerks who were both old and slow. I once stood in line and called out my ticket and I looked at the numbers on my ticket and they were wrong. I said, "you punched in the wrong numbers" and the white haired clerk became irritated and crankily said, "well call out the right ones Buddy". I did, and then I gave him a hard thanks and he replied in a friendly manor: "Hey buddy do you shave your arms?" I had to admit I laughed. I could never figure out why Pimlico was built this way. What I did know is when you went to the men’s room the attendant always had the Oriole’s game on the radio. I would associate summertime with the baseball games at Pimlico as a characteristic of Americana. Between the grandstand and the clubhouse is the paddock, which is inside the building with virtually no room to stand and view the paddock and walking ring. Another short tunnel leads to the clubhouse, where you would see the main floor covered with what looked like imitation linoleum floors. There are iron seats on the track side past the finish line to the turn and beyond, with all the good seats located in the grandstand. What makes Pimlico unique is the horses and the people.One of my favorite trainers in Maryland is Dickie Small. He trained for the Meyerhoff brothers. Dickie always trained his runners to run slow early and run fast late; he had the reputation as a long distance trainer. A few years later when I started recording Layoff stats on trainers the surprise to me was that Dickie Small was a premier Sprint Layoff trainer. The Meyerhoffs and trainer Dickie Small had a stakes winning filly named Star Minister who was a head case. She was always saddled on the track and not in the paddock because she needed room. She would whirl around when Dickie Small tried to saddle her and it took a real effort to get her saddled for the race as she was always worked up. Her jockey, a much underrated rider, was Andrea Seefeldt . Dickie had instructed Andrea not to carry her whip when she rode Star Minister and asked Andrea not to move or shake the rains at her and to just steer her, to let her run on her own. He said whatever you do make sure you do not move on Star Minister and remain absolutely frozen on her. Andrea suffered serious criticism for that riding style and what she referred to as "Star Minister headaches". Dickie Small told the Washington Post that Andrea was following his instructions to the T. Star Minister had 21 starts, 10 wins, 3 seconds and 1 third. She had a 48% win rate and was in the exacta 61% of her races. Star Minister never knew that Andrea carried a whip for all other horses except for her. Andrea once said: "I hit Star Minister with the whip once in a race and she turned her head around and looked at me as if to say 'Don’t ever hit me with that whip again'!" Dickie Small is a pretty large guy with rounded shoulders and his typical hat. I never saw him in a baseball cap. Instead he wore one of those hounds tooth colored hats. He employed unknown jocks or jocks that needed a pay check. He never rode a big name jock on his horses. He is like Allen Jerkens in New York. If you need the rent paid these two trainers will give you a mount. Dickie Small is a former Green Beret and fought in South Vietnam. One sunny day in June in the 1980s I was at Pimlico when a really bad storm swept over the track. They delayed post time for one of the races because of the storm. A lightning strike hit the flagpole in front of the tote board and as the storm passed, the rain was still coming down in sheets. I saw a figure walk onto the track and ducked under the fence in front of the flag pole and realized it was Dickie Small. He picked up the flag and folded it in a triangle, the same way that the military folded the flag. He was oblivious of the inclement weather. Small then set the flag on a row of bushes by the flag pole and started walking to the barn area. I just sat there, struck by what I saw when a guy a few feet away from me said “did you see that?” I said yes and he said “I love that guy.” I could only say yes because I felt chocked up witnessing an unusual thing that was based on by his love of country and what the flag represented to him. I am from a military family and my father spent 26 years in the Air force. I have an uncle who spent 30 years in the Air Force and I spent 4 years 3 months and 18 days in the Marine Corps. My brother spent 4 years in the Army and my son spent 6 years in the Army. I always brag that in my family I am the only one that never received a good conduct medal. Dickie Small felt the same things about our country that my family does. People and the horses is what racing is all about. One time Susan and I were at Pimlico and we were by the finish line waiting for the race to go off. There were two really intense guys over by the rail. The taller guy turned to the shorter guy and pointed to his temple and said "concentrate, 5-7, concentrate, 5-7”. Then he put his fingers to his friends temple and intensely said, "concentrate, 5-7, concentrate, 5-7”. The shorter guy looked up and put his fingers to his own temple and kept repeating "concentrate, 5-7 concentrate, 5-7” over and over. The gates opened and the 5-7 broke in front of the field and held the lead the entire race. The two guys yelled at the top of their lungs 5-7, 5-7, for 1 minute and 12 seconds. They were deliriously high and mighty that they had won. My horse in that race was never in contention so Susan and I started rooting for the 5-7, 5-7 and we were happy they won and cashed. When Susan and I need to get a hit, we will point to our temple and say "concentrate 5-7, concentrate 5-7". Holy Bull is one of my favorite horses. I never saw him live, just on TV. He was the fastest horse I had ever seen. He would get to the lead and control the pace and wait for another runner to pull up to him. His jockey Mike Smith would not move when all of a sudden you could see the turn over in Holy Bull’s legs and he would pull in front again. He quickly became my favorite horse. At Saratoga Holy Bull went up against Dehere who the New York press was calling a super star. When Dehere went past him Holy Bull put on a burst of speed that made everyone at the Cracked Claw in Urbana, Maryland stand up and start yelling. Holy Bull was all or nothing. He had 16 races and 13 wins for an 81% win rate. He won almost 2 ½ million. He was owned and trained by Jimmy Croll from New Jersey and if Holy Bull had been from New York he would have been called a superhorse. Holy Bull’s last race was at Gulftream when he went up against the great Cigar trained by Bill Mott. He was pulled up during the race with a leg injury and then retired. I had $200 win on Holy Bull. Jimmy Croll raced in Maryland as well as the Mid-Atlantic region. Holy Bull has had the good life for many years since his retirement and the new profession in the breeding shed. Susan purchased a lithograph of Holy Bull for me. When I see one of his offspring I look to see if he is tall and gray and maybe I will see one of his sons run with that push button speed of his dad. Holy Bull has produced some really good runners; however, none have displayed the “I can play with you” with my kind of speed. Susan and I now live in Cape Coral Florida on the west coast and we have made an agreement to move over to Ft. Lauderdale so we can get back into live on-track racing at Calder and Gulfstream and enjoy what racing is really about: the people and the horses. Concentrate, 5-7, 5-7. To Top
| FROM MARCH 2007 NEWSLETTER ISSUE | | PITCH COUNT | By: Ed Bain The sport that is accepted as a legitimate way to understand the game and gives it its popularity through statistics is baseball. Major League Baseball has 30 teams. There are 25 players on each team or a total of 750 players. During the regular season there are 162 games. Multiply 162 games by the 750 players, there are 121,500 initial bits of information if every player gets into the game. There are 2 pitch counts of 4 balls and 3 strikes happening at the same time in every game. The hitter’s pitch count and the pitcher’s pitch count. A hitter has every kind of count made on his at bat that can be made moving through the pitch count. As an example how many hits does he get with 3 balls and no strikes? How many hits does he get with no balls and 2 strikes? What percentage of hits are infield hits what percentage of his hits are to the outfield. What percentage of the batters hits are to left field to center field and right field so the defense can make a shift to the hitter’s tendencies. How many outs he makes that are fly balls, how many outs are ground outs? How he hits against left handed pitchers how he hits against right handed pitchers. How he hits in day games what his numbers are in night games. What is his batting average his on base percentage, his home run total, what are his runs batted in? Those are only a small portion of the statistics that are compiled on the hitter.
The pitcher has the same type of statistics on his pitch count to the batter. What percentage of his pitches are curve balls when he has a full count. What percentage of his pitches are strikes with a 2 and 2 count. What are his numbers on 1st throw to the plate what percentage are balls what percentage are strikes? What is the breakdown of fly ball outs to ground outs for this pitcher? How does he perform on 5 days between starts what is his percentage of wins on 4 days between starts. What is his earned run average? Every aspect of the game of baseball is charted with the sole reason to find an advantage through statistics. It may be to shift an infielder 1 step to the left for this hitter or have the center fielder play shallow for this hitter because a large percentage of his hits are grounders up the middle. The opposing team has a count on how the infielder goes to his right how he fields going to his left. The opposing team has numbers on how many times an out fielder has thrown out a runner trying to stretch out a hit from 1st to 2nd or 2nd to 3rd. The hitter knows what percentage of the time the pitcher will throw a fast ball for a 1st strike. The pitcher knows through statistics if the batter is a low ball hitter or if he can not hit a curve ball low and away.
The hitter knows that on 1 ball 2 strikes the pitcher is going to go up the ladder on him to make him chase pitches he can not hit. The good managers discuss with the hitters what a pitcher will throw in the pitch count. The pitching coach makes the pitchers chart all the hitters to find out how the hitter performs against a 2 strike count or what the batter will do when the pitcher throws a change up when the pitch count is 2 and 2 and he expects a fastball or will the batter always take the 1st pitch in his at bat. The pitcher finds the batters strength or weakness by charting the hitters pitch count. The best players consult their statistics on every aspect of the game from where he needs to play the hitter while on defense to what the pitcher will throw in the pitch count when he is at the plate. The pitcher knows what the batters weakness are in the pitch count and puts the percentages on his side when he knows the hitter is looking for a fast ball and the pitcher knows he can not hit a curve ball when the count is 3 and 2. Earl Weaver is the 1st manager to use statistics as a way to gain an advantage. Earl Weaver was the volatile manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the 60s 70s and 80s. He used to catch a lot of flack from the experts on his application of statistics. The experts did not think it was a viable way to manage the game by applying percentages to create an advantage. Earl would platoon hitters. A batter may hit 300 overall but with the use of statistics he would find out this hitter batted 320 against right handed pitchers but 190 against lefty’s so he would sit that player down against left handed pitchers and replace him with a hitter who had a higher batting average against left handed pitchers. This was a way through stats to replace a good hitter with poor stats in a particular situation and gain an advantage by replacing him with a hitter who had a larger batting average against lefties. Earl ran a pitch count on all his pitchers he new what number of pitches thrown when to replace that pitcher and bring in a relief pitcher to maintain his statistical advantage. Earl Weaver’s applications of stats were revolutionary to his game and to baseball. He claims it is the reason he was a successful manager. Once Earl had the statistics in hand he knew how to coach and influence the out come of a baseball game and he always played the percentages. Earl Weaver won 3 World Series. Listen to today’s baseball announcers and they reel off statistic after statistic on every hitter and every pitcher on the team. Baseball has no advantage over Horse racing when it comes to understanding the game through statistics. Horse racing has more. The difference is baseball statistics are accepted as a way to talk about and understand the game. Listen to the pre race expert analyst and they never include statistics. Handicappers are unaware that there are stats on every aspect of racing.
Every year there are about 60,000 races run in the U.S. and there are 8.1 starters per race. Multiply those two figures and that’s about ½ a million runners a year. Each of these runners will have literally thousands of bits of information. Statistics includes not only information on the horse, but also the trainer, owner, jockey, track, morning line odds, actual odds, pedigree information on the sire and dam’s sire. Information on drugs, surface, equipment changes, workouts and distances. Information on race times through each ¼ mile. All of this information and much more can be combined then sorted to find statistical advantages.
The difference from baseball to horse racing is the experts will not do the work to create statistics or they do not perform the research to find statistics so they are not aware of any statistical advantage. The Daily Racing Form is full of information and numbers but it is not filled with statistics. The DRF prefers to put numbers in the past performances but not to carry through with a percentage. By not printing the percentage a vital piece of instantly recognized data or fact is bypassed as unimportant by the handicapper because the connection of the numbers to a percentage bypasses the awareness of instant insight that the percentage allows.
The past performance block has thousands of bits of information and it is all ignored by the DRF. There are no counts on any of the information in the past performance block and when it is, it is a general stat like the trainers record the horses record or the Beyer speed figures. Most of the information in the Form is just to notify you it is there like the Layoff line or the letter C to tell us this horse was just claimed. The Beyer speed figures show the speed figure for every horse’s race in the PP’s. What the Beyer speed figures do not do is give a win percentage on how often the last race’s highest Beyer speed figure goes on to win. The way that is taught to handicap Beyer speed figures is to evaluate horse by horse speed. The past performance block shows the position of each horse through each ¼ mile the player then tries to project what the horses running style will be in today’s race then place a bet on supposition, I think he is going to win, I suppose he will have the lead. Those 2 ways to bet by running style and speed figures is a not the only way to go broke but it is the most common way players tap out. The DRF reminds me of the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park. Fenway is a great place to view the game with many angles and design flaws with short distances down the fowl lines to produce easy home runs but a center field that goes back 420 feet and difficult to hit home runs. Along with a wall named the green monster where hits that should be home runs end up to be singles and pop ups that should be outs end up to be home runs. The team always tries to find big lumbering pull hitting fly ball hitters to hit the ball over the green monster. Because of its design flaws Fenway Park has prevented the Red Sox from becoming champions. Because of the Daily Racing Forms format of a past performance block they have prevented players from becoming winners.
The DRF is the equivalent to the green monster because it puts all the emphasis on running style and Beyer speed figures. Speed has as many design flaws as Fenway Park. Practically all other information like statistics is ignored for the pull hitting fly ball pop up lumbering speed player. Baseball is labeled a team sport it is only a team sport for the defense. It is 9 players against 1. The hitter has only his athletic ability and his knowledge of the pitcher and what will be thrown at him within the pitch count of 4 balls 3 strikes.
I also have a pitch count. I track the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th race after a Layoff, Claim and Debut separated by sprint and route that is 8 in the pitch count. I have a betting stat the 4+30 this trainer has to have at least 4 wins and at least a 30% win rate to qualify as a bet. This 30% win rate is the same as hitting 300 in baseball. Horse racing is not a team sport when I bet it is me against the tote board when I bet I only bet within the pitch count and I bet only trainers who hit 300. Relating racing to baseball I know what is going to be thrown at me in the pitch count with the 4+30.
Should I swing at This Howard Wolfendale 4+30 Claim 1 sprint, his horse has 17 races with 1 win 7 race are at this distance with no wins. Because of his horses record for this distance I will take this Wolfendale pitch and label it a curve ball and wait for the fastball down the middle.
On the 9th of march Wolfendale had another Claim 1 sprint 4 +30 the horse at this distance has 4 races 2 wins I knew what he was going to throw in the pitch count he was going to throw a strike on the 1st pitch or Claim 1 Sprint a fastball down the middle I swung and got a hit a single up the middle he paid $6.00. Statistics are a legitimate way to understand the game and place a bet. Betting within the 8 count pitch count with Layoffs, Claims and Debut’s and with the 4+30 allows me to understand the game to give myself a chance to get a hit when I know what is being thrown at me in the pitch count because I have charted the throws. Some day statistics in racing will be accepted as a way to understand the game and give racing the popularity that is the equal to baseball. Its time for racing to open another can of pitchers.To Top
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