11/20/24 - Tampa Bay Opening Day!

Nate is back on Metz Bets with his opinion on race 8 of the opening day card at Tampa Bay Downs! Be sure to subscribe to Metz Bets wherever you listen to your podcasts, and follow Nate on X @NateMetz and @MetzBets for more horse racing fun. Good luck!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, everybody, welcome back to Mets Bets. I'm your host,
Nate Mets, and it is opening day at Tampa Bay Downs.
It is November twentieth. It's a cold and chilly morning
up here in southwestern Ohio, but the racing is going
to be heating up down south all winter long. I
was looking for a place to play all winter, and
I wasn't really sure where I was going to go.

(00:22):
Do I go Turfway, which I'll be there quite a
bit physically, Will I go to Fairgrounds? Will it be
somewhere else? And I landed on Tampa Bay Downs because
I know that sometimes the purses might not be super
high at Tampa Bay Downs, but I think that the
races are pretty competitive at times, and they have a
great turf course, and I want to get better at
my turf handicapping, and I think that this is a

(00:43):
good way to track that, to maybe give out a
couple of ideas and opinions on some races, and maybe
make a little bit of money too in the meantime.
So let's go in and talk about the marquee pic
of the day for me, or the race that I'm
really interested in and that would come in Tampa Bay's
opening day card, Race number eight. Race eight is a

(01:07):
claiming race going six furlongs. It's an eight thousand dollars
claimer for phillies and mayors again female horses that have
never won three races in their life. And let's look
at the favorite number three, Practicality. Now. Practicality ridden by
Alex Gonzalez, trained by One Area Gotta and One Area Gotta.
For those of you that don't play outside of you know,

(01:29):
Kentucky or California or even New York. He's a great
East Coast trainer up and down the East Coast from
Florida to Delaware. One Area Gotta a great trainer, winning
at a twenty six percent clip. And this season, I'm
interested to see how he does. I'm excited that he's
got two morning line favorites today. I want to see
how they do. Race five horse three, Bold Baby is

(01:52):
one that I'm going to be watching to see how's
that barn's form. Right now, A lot of today is
going to just be watching the early races to see
how are all of these different tracks performing, because I
don't know if you can play every track consistently, you
may have a problem and be tell me how you
do it, because I can only stick with like maybe

(02:13):
one track through a season. Yeah, maybe I could take
a look at a card, but I don't have a
great opinion on a track profile if I don't play
it every day, or if I don't play it consistently.
And the hope is that over the season, over the
eighty nine days of racing at Tampa Bay, I'm gonna
get a pretty good feel for the track profile and
how it's playing. It's like today. Obviously we're not going
to know anything about the turf because there are no

(02:34):
turf races, but yeah, in these dirt races, I'm curious
to see, you know, how all of these different horses
shipping in are going to perform. A couple other horses
to look at number four, Burn the Breeze, Sammy Camacho.
I just I feel like Sammy Camacho is going to
take a ton of money in every race at Tampa
Bay Downs. At least early on, while people are kind of,
you know, feeling out the track, they're not going to

(02:55):
be very confident. They're going to see Alex Gonzalez a
board practicality coming off of a night month layoff, and
they might be like, well, you know, he's a nine
percent jockey. I don't know if I want to take
that risk, and so they'll just default to Sammy Camacho.
I am not going to do that today. Sammy Camacho
is fantastic and he's gonna win a ton of races
throughout this season, I am sure. But at least in

(03:17):
this spot, burn the breeze dropping class gonna be forwardly
placed in a sprint. I like that a lot, but
I just the speed figures favor practicality, even coming off
of that long layoff. But I feel like Alex Gonzales
might be riding a rocket here in this one. Number
five Cajun Expectation also could be interesting. Speed figures don't

(03:38):
really jump off the page, but shipping in from Colonial
after getting claimed and now in the Jan Ramos Barn,
so we'll see if maybe there is some sort of
improvement from Cajun Expectation, written by Jose Batista, who also
could very well take some money. But I like practicality.
I like the favorite in this race. I know coming
off of a nine month layoff can be difficult, but

(04:00):
this horse has been very competitive at Tampa Bay earlier
this year. Back in my February and I'm hoping that
that form can come back, and hopefully that will be
the case. This horse did win off of a short
layoff back in November of last year, but not a
nine monthlyoff right, that was a two monthlayoff. But we'll
see if Practicality is fresh and ready to go off

(04:20):
the bench in Race eight. On day one. It's opening
day of Tampa Bay Downs. Best of luck everybody, and
remember subscribe to Mets Bets. I'll be posting my Mets
bet of the day. In this case, it was Practicality.
Hopefully at nine to five or higher. I would like
to see those odds tick up a little bit, but
we will wait and see. This is opening day of

(04:41):
Tampa Bay Downs. Eighty eight. More picks here throughout the
season and we'll catch you on Saturday. Good luck,