It’s Chad versus Todd, their long rivalry shifted from New York to New Jersey and involving a pair of 6-year-old mares. Chad Brown has Kalifornia Queen for the $100,000 Miss Liberty Stakes, Monmouth Park’s featured fifth race Sunday that’s all but certain to have the Todd Pletcher-trained Scotish Star as the favorite. Scotish Star has a pace advantage in a short field set to race 1 1/16 miles on grass, but also has a tendency to wait on horses. She has been second in three of her last four starts and in all her North Amerian races, save an allowance win last summer at Saratoga, Scotish Star has at best gone evenly and at worst lost ground from the stretch call to the finish. At least Scotish Star has recent solid form, having finished second to the Brown-trained Shantisara in her most recent race, the March 11 Hillsborough Stakes. Kalifornia Queen has hardly any recent form at all. She was a flat sixth in the Hillsborough, her first race since November and just her third in the last two calendar years. Kalifornia Queen had quite an encouraging 2021, finishing a close third in the Grade 1 E.P. Taylor and a good second at Monmouth in the Matchmaker, but she didn’t race between October 2021 and September 2022 and in three starts following the extended break hasn’t looked like the same horse. :: Bet the races on DRF Bets! Sign up with code WINNING to get a $250 Deposit Match, $10 Free Bet, and FREE DRF Formulator.  One assumes Kalifornia Queen, trained by Brown for a partnership, stayed in training during 2023 for good reason. The mare was a Group 2 stakes winner in Germany before being exported and is highly unlikely to capture a higher-class race than that. At her best, the diminutive Kalifornia Queen has proven she can close effectively into a strong pace, the likely scenario she faces Sunday. Scotish Star hardly merits trust at a short price under Paco Lopez. Her career began with a pair of dirt wins in Argentina, the second at the Grade 1 level, but the mare has gone 1-4-1 from eight American outings. After her importation, Scotish Star raced on dirt for trainer Richard Mandella, and after a trainer change to Pletcher, her career moved to grass. In addition to her hanging tendencies, Scotish Star turned in the worst start of her career in the only American race where she didn’t run on the anti-bleeder medication Lasix, which isn’t permitted Sunday. Only seven were entered in the Miss Liberty and two of them, the stablemates Irie Empress and Madam Rouge, don’t belong in the race. My Thoughts and Alexa’s Dream are too slow, leaving Spirit And Glory as the only plausible upset candidate. Spirit And Glory declined in four starts following a win in the $209,000 Virginia Oaks in September, but following a freshening returned with a better showing April 16 in an Aqueduct turf-route stakes. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.