Musket Man/Derek Ryan

[ColonelShillito]

Forgive me for being a \"sheets\" novice.  I am looking at Derek Ryan\'s profile, the trainer of Musket Man.  I see Musket Man as a potential superfecta bomber off of his solid efforts to win the Illionois Derby and the Tampa Bay Derby.  

However, my major negatives include, obviously, his pedigree, which indicates he maxes out near 8.5 furlongs, the strength of the field he defeated in those two efforts, and info I found in Derek Ryan\'s profile on the ThoroGraph sheet: when Derek Ryan runners run a top of 1-4 points or more, his runner\'s run an \"X\" 41% of the time next out.

As a player with limited funds (basically a weekend warrior), am I barking up the wrong tree by looking at this stat?  or should I ignore, given the fact that Musket Man SHOULD be 20-1 or more come next Saturday and squeeze him int my final superfecta play?

[miff]

Col,

When a horse is a bomb, throw all of the statistics/knocks out the window and just bet!Talking yourself off of a long priced horse, for any reason, is unforgivable in this game.


Mike

[big18741]

His final work and his post draw would be determining factors for me.

He\'s already run fast enough to hit the ticket.If he\'s holding his conditioning,works well over the track and gets lucky with the draw-why not?

[HP]

Colonel Shill,
How many horses have sires that \"max out\" at 10 furlongs?  How many horses in this race have knockout 10f pedigrees?  Unless he\'s an outright sprint type I wouldn\'t sweat this one too much if I liked a longshot here otherwise.  

On the \"X\" stat with Ryan, this includes ALL of his horses, and he probably has some lower grade stock in there.  These horses are more likely to \"X\" than a strong top-flight 3yo.  Also add in that in the classic \"Derby pattern\" 3yos can pair up strong efforts, unless the big effort is a HUGE jump up.  Are his last races out of line, or do they look like a few points of natural development that he can handle?  That\'s the question.  Musket Man is not your typical Derek Ryan horse.  

I haven\'t looked at any sheets for this yet (!), these are just general observations.  

Good luck.  HP

[RICH]

He definitely has the number to hit the board, a small jump with a good trip can win it, the trainer is on record talking about the benefits of training on the deep Tampa bay track, he says FWIW, that the horse is flying over the CD track thanks to working on that \"deep TB track\"