On Steve Byk\'s show yesterday (a little after 3 minutes of Part 2), Andy Serling asked a question about sheet figures for Independence Hall in the Jerome versus the Nashua. I think he was committing the unpardonable sin of conflating Ragozin and ThoroGraph.
https://stevebyk.com/broadcast/part-2-andy-serling-jon-white-2/
Later in the show, there is a discussion of herding (Lone Rock v. Haikal in Race 7 at Aqu on Sunday). I\'m a little confused about the definition of herding. I thought it applied when horses on the lead drifted out to keep another horse from going by. In this case, the horse allegedly doing the herding was even or a little behind.
Putting aside that Andy sounds like he\'s either asleep or high (based neither on information or belief), I think he\'s asking whether we did with the race what he heard Jake did. If he\'s right about what they did, we definitely did not.
They gave him a 4. Public info they put it out on Twitter. Which makes him uhhh....like American Pharoah Fast Lol
For his last or the one before that?
For the Jerome. Don’t know before that
If that\'s true it\'s going to turn out to be a classic example of a difference in methodology between those guys and literally all the serious figure makers. They are the only ones I\'ve heard of that believe tracks don\'t change speed during the day (see \"Changing Track Speeds\" in the Archives section), and that\'s true historically as well (\"History Lesson 2\", same place).
The track got a lot faster through the day at Aqueduct on January 1 (like almost 7 points). Since those guys believe (per Ragozin and Friedman\'s book) that tracks don\'t do that, they will give horses who ran early in the card figures way to slow, or those in the later races way too fast, or both (if they end up using what amounts to the average track speed for the day, as opposed to the actual speed for each race).
Back in November Independence Hall did run a gigantic figure, he might get back to that again, regardless of the last one. But the other ones out of the Jerome, who apparently were given crazy new tops by Jake (that they didn\'t run), will show up as way too fast going forward, and some of the ones in the early races will look slower than they are when they come back. So you guys on the Rag board who are going to start screaming about this post-- why don\'t you watch a few these horses come back again before you do. Keep track of it.
I guess Andy Serling heard right. I was not aware (until Chas04 pointed it out) that Ragozin put some figures on Twitter each week. Looking back through their Twitter feed, they gave Independence Hall a 4.5 in both the Nashua and the Jerome.
Having absolutely zero experience with this kind of thing I very much appreciate a dumb downed simplified explanation of figures. It makes so much sense on everything you mentioned. I was initially shocked on the number but more on the competition. They all are running 5\'s and 6\'s? That wins majority of Kentucky Derbys. Sooo...the question has to be asked.
I didn\'t even know that was a 4.5 thanks for pointing that out BitPlayer. I actually have been following Ragozin on Twitter for a while. It was interesting to see the posts leading to the Breeders Cup I thought.