Well, easy may not have been the right word (The Factor is the easy toss). The way I look at Smash is the following....the horse has been running nothing by 3s and hasn\'t been able to break through. While it is certainly possible he makes a step forward on dirt, I wouldn\'t say it is probable (and who knows, maybe he is better on synth). He could even move backwards off that line. I do not see any significant dry dirt differential in the siblings or the pedigree. In fact, an argument can be constructed that he should like off tracks more than fast tracks (although i do agree with you that Calder is a quirky surface for a lot of reasons). Even though he has been running on synthetic all the time, even if it is not his best surface, he should show some improvement with racing. If he is not showing improvement, then that tells me that Baffert is already getting maximum effort from the horse and all you can hope for is that he keeps him at that level.
Another part of why I would toss him is his price. He is ML second choice. If you look at the form, he is bet heavily every time he runs. He is a shiny pricey yearling purchase. If he is truly second choice behind the factor and bet the way he is usually bet, there is no value in him at all and the people who are betting him are doing it for the obvious reasons....not because they have any superior information or analysis. I do not think that Smash fits in the Baffert betting profile you are talking about. There are a ton of Bafferts in this race and I think all the others (except for The Factor) will be longer and fit the pattern you are talking about. Smash is not hidden in any way. A lot of times with those Bafferts you are talking about.....they might be slow, but they usually have a pattern based reason to be looking at them. Smash has a negative pattern in my view.
My view is that by tossing The Factor and Smash, I open up a lot of value. While either one of them could kill me, that is the type of risk I am willing to live with. It is there....but it is not as big a risk as the people betting those horses think it is. Look, horses I toss kill me a lot. But, I never get upset when a short priced horse I toss kills me. That is a necessary part of the game to keep that type of money in the pool. What kills me (and happens to often) is that I correctly throw out the top two choices...but then still do not hit the race and it comes back boxcars like I thought was possible. To me, that is the greater risk than throwing out Smash and regretting it.
