Met Mile fair odds: Zandon is choice to upset Cody's Wish

I am one of those handicappers who thinks weight absolutely matters. Trainers talk about it, and the top "performance figures" in handicapping such as Ragozin and ThoroGraph both incorporate weight into their numbers. That's enough for me.

Yes, you will hear people lament that "a few pounds on a thousand-pound animal" does not make a difference, but in a game decided by necks and noses, every pound absolutely matters – especially in aggregate. If Cody's Wish were carrying 4 pounds and Zandon 0 then that's far less an issue for the favorite than the actual 126 versus 122.

Cody's Wish is one of the best horses in training, and his talent is only eclipsed by the storyline that has come along with him. I hate the cliche, "If I lose I hope it's to" in this case Cody's Wish, but this is an easy horse to be happy about him doing well.

But the Met Mile is a tall order, even for a horse with a win at the course and distance among four other one-turn mile wins, when you have to carry high weight of 126 pounds. Cody's Wish is the most likely winner, but my fair odds are 5-2, so at the 7-5 morning line, he is a clear play against.

It will be imperative to watch the board on Zandon, who has been a money burner throughout his career. he paid $12 and $6.20 in his two wins, but all eight of his losses have come at 6.2-1 or less, including a pair of odds on defeats in his previous two races, both one-turn miles.

That is the bad news; the good news is that his four-year-old debut was one of his best races, and while he was overbet, he ran well to be "best of the rest" when 5 1/4 lengths behind Repo Rocks when wide on that big sweeping turn. He reunites with Flavien Prat here, a jockey who was aboard for one of the colt's two wins, albeit that around two turns.