Super Screener preview: All-stakes Pick 5 at Fair Grounds

Much rightfully has been made of the roads to the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby winding through Fair Grounds on Saturday with the Silverbulletday and Lecomte Stakes. But another road begins in New Orleans this weekend. The road to the Muniz Memorial Classic Stakes presented by Horse Racing Nation.

The turf series begins Saturday with the Colonel E. R. Bradley Stakes, continues on Risen Star Stakes day Feb. 17 with the Fair Grounds Stakes presented by HRN and concludes with the Muniz on Louisiana Derby day March 23.

The Bradley is the middle leg of the all-stakes Pick 5 that begins with its female counterpart, the Marie G. Krantz Memorial Stakes for distaff turfers, and concludes with the Lecomte. 

Plenty of short prices are peppered in the sequence, but with a $250,000 guarantee and cancellations already dotting the Saturday racing landscape, there should be opportunity in the pools at America's second-oldest track.

With a 5-1 morning-line horse featuring prominently among Super Screener's selections in the Bradley, that is the race that most attracted my attention. Strong Quality is possibly the best horse, but at 3-1 on the morning line, there is reason to think he might get softened up by other pace players.

"The Super Screener top win and top value play in this contest is Rising Empire," Mike Shutty writes in this week's Super Screener. "The 6-year-old Brendan Walsh-trainee has enjoyed success over this turf course, and he shows up here off an interesting form cycle in which he returned to run well off a very long layoff, then bombed next out with no apparent excuse.

"Since that was not a typical performance, the Super Screener is expecting a boomerang performance here, which is the pattern of a top followed by a double-digit regression followed by a match or near match of that previous top. No horse projects to sit a more perfect trip as he will be pressing the pace comfortably with some distance back to the next closest rival. He'll get the first jump on the deep closers and just needs to get past the aforementioned Strong Quality."

Each screened race in Super Screener includes wagering strategy to complement the ranking of contenders by top win contenders, most reliable board hitter, top value, top long shots and other horses to use.

This week's edition also includes a grid looking at the all-stakes Pick 4, races 10-13, on Saturday at Fair Grounds.