This one’s for the ladies.

Churchill Downs is about more than just mint julep and the Kentucky Derby. There’s also the Kentucky Oaks, the premier race on the calendar for 3-year-old fillies. Fourteen spots are available in the starting field, and at press time, there were at least 15 horses lining up for a shot at the $500,000 purse.

The easy favorite on the futures market is Rags to Riches at 3-2. This Todd Pletcher-trained chestnut filly certainly has the pedigree (sired by A.P. Indy, the 1992 Horse of the Year), and she took first place in all three of her races this year, including the Grade I Las Virgenes and the Grade I Santa Anita Oaks. However, Rags to Riches has yet to race against the level of competition she will encounter in Louisville on May 4.

That competition would have been even stiffer had Magnificence not come up with heat in her ankle after posting an amazing 109 Beyer figure in winning the Grade III Santa Paula Stakes. Folk may pose a challenge should she enter the race; her status remained uncertain as recently as last week, making the “field” at 20-1 an intriguing value choice for any handicapper with some Folk foreknowledge.

The next horse on the odds list, and the apparent No. 2 consensus choice of horseplayers, is another Todd Pletcher entry: Octave at 6-1. This roan filly knows plenty about second place – that was her result in each of her last four races, including last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

The best value on the market may be the Juvenile winner. Dreaming of Anna (30-1) had been pointed elsewhere after some poor results as a 3-year-old, but her recent work has been so pleasing that trainer Wayne Catalano appears ready to change his mind. Dreaming of Anna was 9-1 in Pool 2 of the Oaks Future Wager, so expect her current odds to get a lot shorter.

OK, so the Nashville Predators won’t win the Stanley Cup. I don’t feel too silly for picking them. You could have made a case for any of the 16 teams who went into the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Well, maybe not the New York Islanders.

So who’s the best bet of the remaining eight? I like the Ottawa Senators at 6-1. The Sens showed a little bit of everything in their series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, snuffing the inexperienced Pens in five games. Ray Emery’s goaltending was solid, the defenders in front of him were stout, and Ottawa scored on the power play in each contest. The path through the Eastern Conference looks easier, as well. The New Jersey Devils (7-1) are up next; after that, the Sens will face either the New York Rangers (10-1) or the Buffalo Sabres (3-1).

Much like the NBA, we have an imbalance of power. Any of the remaining four teams in the West would be a strong candidate to go all the way. But they have to survive one another first. That makes the Anaheim Ducks (4-1), the Detroit Red Wings (4-1) and the San Jose Sharks (9-2) far too chalky. The Vancouver Canucks are a much better value at 8-1 to win the first Cup in their history. They lack depth up front; however, goaltending is king, and Roberto Luongo is one of the best in the business today.

Now, let’s forget about value and all that for a second. I still think the Senators are the best team of the above-mentioned octet. I don’t see any areas of weakness on this club. Anaheim appears similar in nature, but Ottawa’s third and fourth lines look stronger. That would make one heck of a final. Or how about Red Wings goalie Dominik Hasek coming back to haunt his old team? If Todd Bertuzzi stays in one piece all the way to the finals, that would be an even bigger mountain for Ottawa to climb. These Senators can do it.

Your best pick? The Vancouver Canucks. Here’s a site that’s got all the NHL Stanley Cup odds.

Winning a World Series doesn’t have the street cred it used to.

The St. Louis Cardinals are 14-1 on the futures market to defend their championship. The New York Mets (6-1) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (10-1) are higher up on the food chain, while the Chicago Cubs (15-1) are nipping at their heels. The Cubs? The last time they won the World Series was the same year the first Model-T rolled off the line.

Nobody gave the Cards much respect last year – except handicappers, of course. They saw established value in Jeff Suppan (27.0 VORP) and upside in rookie Anthony Reyes and the enigmatic Jeff Weaver. All three came through in the crunch, as did Chris Carpenter, the 2005 Cy Young winner. Carpenter matched that performance with a 67.8 VORP, but his 15-8 record (sandbagged by 10 no-decisions in 32 starts) kept him out of the limelight in 2006.

The rotation looks a little different this year. Carpenter and Reyes remain, joined by Kip Wells, Braden Looper and converted reliever Adam Wainwright. So far, it’s the newcomers holding things together. Carpenter is battling elbow problems and is expected to remain out of action until May. That’s one of the main reasons St. Louis is plugging along at 6-9 thus far.

Another reason: Albert Pujols isn’t even hitting his weight. His .730 OPS is way below last year’s 1.102 mark, which was actually an improvement over his 2005 MVP season when Pujols posted a 1.039 OPS. That slump isn’t going to last. Neither will Jim Edmonds’ (.503 OPS) or Scott Rolen’s (.576 OPS). That’s the heart of the batting order right there. Chris Duncan (.981 OPS) is holding the fort in what promises to be a breakout campaign. Handicappers should hope St. Louis continues to drag its heels for a while, because when the Cards come back, money will be made.

History sure has funny ways of repeating itself.

Back in the Civil War, an African-American slave named Charles Curlin fought on the Confederate side. Curlin was from Kentucky. Now, his great-great grandson is part-owner of the favorite to win the 2007 Kentucky Derby. The horse’s name? Curlin, of course.

This is a factoid you’re bound to hear repeated over and over again on the Triple Crown trail, if you haven’t already. But Curlin is more than just a human/equine interest story. The chestnut colt deserves his status as the 4-1 chalk to win the Derby. His prep races have been nothing short of fantastic. Curlin posted an eye-popping 101 Beyer speed rating during February’s maiden win at Gulfstream, took the Grade III Rebel Stakes by 5-1/4 lengths, then crushed the field by a record 10-1/2 lengths at the Grade II Arkansas Derby this past Saturday at Oaklawn Park. Curlin managed a 103 (!) Beyer figure at that event.

Curlin was already among the top faves at 6-1 to win the Derby before claiming the $1-million prize at Oaklawn. But the results from Saturday’s Grade I Blue Grass at Keeneland helped push Curlin to the top of the odds list. Street Sense finished second to Dominican to slip behind Curlin at 5-1; Great Hunter came in fifth to fall to 14-1. Those results should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as they came on a Polytrack surface.

The knock on Curlin at this point is that he only has three races under his saddle. History shows that no horse since Regret in 1915 has won the Derby with so little preparation. And if you really want to put a damper on this lovefest, Apollo was the last horse to win the Run for the Roses without having raced as a 2-year-old. That was at the 1882 Derby. But these are red herrings for handicappers. How often does a horse as impressive as Curlin come along? Maybe once every 100 years.

Weren’t the Calgary Flames supposed to put up a fight?

The Detroit Red Wings are flat-out embarrassing Calgary at every facet of hockey. They won the first two games of their first-round playoff series with relative ease. This is a Flames team with plenty of talent, and Detroit is almost toying with them. But that hasn’t been enough (yet) to make Wings the clear favorites to represent the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup finals.

At press time, the Wings were tied with the Anaheim Ducks at 5-1 to win the Cup. Anaheim has also made a cakewalk of its first-round series, winning the first three games over the Minnesota Wild. The Wild were considered a possible upset candidate based on the goaltending of Niklas Backstrom (.929 save percentage), but Anaheim has snuffed out Minnesota’s already questionable offense, allowing the Ducks to win each game by a single goal.

Detroit and Anaheim were leading the futures market even before their first-round playoff opponents were determined. However, the other two Western series feature strong teams that deserve their share of attention. Both Vancouver-Dallas and Nashville-San Jose have been entertaining, closely fought matchups. Pick any of those four teams to win the conference, and you run the risk of not even making it to the second round.

The Canucks have a 2-1 edge over the Stars, thanks to pair of overtime victories that could easily have gone the other way. And perhaps they should have; Dallas has generally outplayed the Canucks, who have relied on timely bursts of offense and the goaltending of Roberto Luongo.

The Predators, meanwhile, put the hammer down on San Jose this past Friday to tie their series at one game apiece. Earlier in this space, I picked Nashville to win the West and the Cup. I see no reason to change that, despite San Jose’s 3-1 victory over the Preds on Monday night which gave the Sharks a 2-1 series lead. The Predators are far from finished.

Swing, bettor; bettor, swing.

We’ve got the NBA postseason square in our sights. Some of us are even betting hockey now that the playoffs have begun. Good times. But are you betting on baseball? Perhaps you should. It’s one of the simplest pro sports to handicap – provided you aren’t married to the idea of a pointspread.

If you’re already laying coin on the NHL, you probably know what we mean. The moneyline is to baseball (and hockey) what the pointspread is to football. You’re betting on a team to win straight up. To make up for the difference between the favorite and the underdog, payouts are higher on the dog. Piece of cake.

On Wednesday, the Cardinals were –150 favorites in Pittsburgh against the Pirates (+135). The minus sign indicates you bet that number ($150) to win $100. The plus sign indicates you bet $100 to win that number ($135). Handicappers will often look for their value picks among the underdogs, rather than risk “eating chalk” by betting on the faves for less reward.

Although the low scoring in baseball games takes the spread out of the equation, it does make betting the totals more interesting. Your totals generally fall in the 7-12 range, and since baseball is so number-oriented, you can cobble together a list of relevant stats, do some math, and come up feeling more confident about your “over” or “under” pick than you do for NBA matchups.

A statistics-based analytical process is also the cornerstone of playing the MLB market. Baseball is a game of individual outcomes – the team dynamic is almost nonexistent on the diamond. You can project how each player will perform in a game, add them up, and pick a winner. But that takes a lot of time, and time is money. Better to focus on the starting pitchers, with supporting research on the bullpens, the batting orders, the ballpark in use and the umpires working the game.

Don’t forget, a game takes place in an environment, and that environment affects the game. Think Lambeau Field in December. Now think Wrigley Field in April.

They’ll let in anyone these days.

The NBA playoffs are fast approaching. Tremendous as the level of competition may be, it won’t come without its share of bad apples. It looks like at least two and possibly four losing teams will crash the party. Handicappers will take some solace in this; unlike the NHL, where it looks like all 16 playoff teams could win the Stanley Cup, the NBA title chase looks like something that can be reasonably analyzed and forecast. So let’s give it a shot.

The bottom three seeds in the East will be swept: The gap in talent between the Top 5 in the Eastern Conference and the rest of the pack is insane. Detroit looks like it will win the East, followed by either Chicago or Cleveland, then Toronto. Miami appears entrenched in fourth place; these may be the only teams in the entire conference with winning records. Can the Magic win a playoff game against any of them? How about the legless Wizards? Even the Knicks might sneak into eighth place. The horror. The horror.

There will be a major upset in the West: If the playoffs started at the time of publication, the Suns would face the Lakers, and San Antonio would square off against Denver. One or both of those series will go to the lower seed – I’m thinking Denver here. Although L.A. almost did it last year, Amare Stoudemire wasn’t around to put in his 20 points and 10 rebounds’ worth. I see the Iverson-Anthony combo (and the Camby-Nene combo) giving the Spurs a headache.

The Dallas Mavericks will win the NBA title: Yawn. Way to go out there on a limb, Nostradamus. Well, at 7-5 to earn their first championship in franchise history, it’s obvious the Mavs are the pick of the litter. A value pick? Of course not. That would be the Toronto Raptors at 33-1. But that’s another kettle of dromaeosaurids.

Todd Pletcher may be one of the most well-known horse trainers in the world, but he’s still looking for his first win in the Kentucky Derby. In 13 tries Pletcher has come up short each time, but with a large number of Derby contenders this year Pletcher could finally have a winner on his hands.

There are six horses that Pletcher has trained that could be among the 20-horse field in this year’s Derby. These six possible champion thoroughbreds include Any Given Saturday, Circular Quay, King of the Roxy, Sam P., Scat Daddy and Cowtown Cat.

The favorite out of that spectacular field appears to be Scat Daddy. The three-year-old colt started off the season slow with a third-place finish in the Holy Bull Stakes, before posting back-to-back dominant wins in the Fountain of Youth Stakes and the Florida Derby late last month.

If Scat Daddy isn’t the one to finally bring Pletcher a Derby win, the next two stallions to keep a close eye on are King of Roxy and Any Given Saturday. King of Roxy won by 7 1/2 lengths in the Hutcheson Stakes and was narrowly defeated when he finished second at the Santa Anita Derby. Any Given Saturday showed his speed in his 2 3/4 length win in the Sam F. Davis Stakes, but has had a couple of disappointments since then with a second-place finish in the Tampa Bay Derby and a third-place finish in the Wood Memorial Stakes.

Even if those three strong contenders falter, Pletcher still has three strong horses left that could pull off an upset. Cowtown Cat made a strong case for himself as a real dark horse by winning the Illinois Derby last week, while Circular Quay also has a big victory to his name this season in the Louisiana Derby. Sam P. may be a long shot after has seeing his stock drop a little bit after failing to secure a victory in the Holy Bull Stakes (4th), Robert B. Lewis Stakes (2nd) and Santa Anita Derby (3rd).

These are men on a mission.

These days in the NBA, there are the Dallas Mavericks, and then there is everyone else. The Mavs (62-12 straight up, 37-33-4 against the spread) are mere days away from clinching the best record in the league. Dirk Nowitzki is running away with the Most Valuable Player race, and Dallas is the clear favorite at 7-5 to win the first NBA title in franchise history.

But what if they have to play Phoenix? On Apr. 1, the Suns (56-18 SU, 40-33-1 ATS) evened their season series with Dallas at two games apiece with a convincing 126-104 victory as 2-point home faves. The Suns have the second-best record in the league, they play the increasingly fashionable brand of team basketball that has won championships across the pond in Europe, and at 7-2 odds appear to be a better value on the futures market.

Speaking of Euro ball, let’s not forget about Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and the San Antonio Spurs (53-21 SU, 38-35-1 ATS). Unlike the Suns, these international superstars have proven themselves title-worthy at what remains the highest level of league play in the world. Would you bet against three-time champion Tim Duncan at 4-1?

Rounding out the list of top contenders are the Detroit Pistons at 5-1. The other three teams have to survive one another in the Western Conference playoffs just to get to the finals. The Pistons have Miami (11-1), Cleveland (15-1), Chicago (22-1) and maybe Toronto (rising quickly at 28-1) to contend with in the East. It won’t be easy, but it will be easier enough to make Detroit a value pick.

Yeah, yeah, but who’s going to actually win the title? I think you have to go back to the Mavericks. They’ve been playing at an elite level for a prolonged period of time, and they have the motivation of finishing the job they didn’t quite get done last year. Everyone else but Dallas has question marks for a change.

Saturday’s Santa Anita Derby almost had some female persuasion.

Rags to Riches, the standout filly who won each of her last three races, is going to sit this one out and compete instead at the Kentucky Oaks. That’s good news for the rest of the field. The $750,000 SA Derby is the last stop on the West Coast circuit before the Kentucky Derby itself, and everyone will be under the microscope as Louisville draws ever closer. Rags to Riches might have easily eaten their lunch – this is a fairly weak field, a shame for an event with such tradition.

There are two horses who appear to stand out for this nine-furlong event: Liquidity, and King of the Roxy. Liquidity is trained by Doug O’Neill and is fading somewhat after coming in 7-1/2 lengths behind Circular Quay at the Louisiana Derby. But O’Neill is putting on his game face after Liquidity put in some blistering workouts at Hollywood Park, including a 1:12.80 over six furlongs. If the son of Tiznow can finally grab that first stakes victory after winning his maiden at Oak Tree, the Kentucky Derby awaits.

As for King of the Roxy, Todd Pletcher has plenty of other, better horses lined up for the Run for the Roses. However, this dark bay did look quite dashing as a two-year-old, and followed that up with a solid win at the Hutcheson. That victory was worth taking note of. Jockey Edgar Prado tucked in nicely after a slow start, then had no problem putting away previously undefeated Spin Master by 2-1/4 lengths. Impressive. King of the Roxy’s got speed to burn – noted sprinter Littleexpectations was his sire – but there is also stamina courtesy of third dam General Store. Nine furlongs shouldn’t be too much of a problem.