Calculator broke his maiden in style while romping in the Sham (Benoit Photos)

Despite still being a maiden, Richard C. Pell's Calculator was sent off the 3-5 favorite against seven rivals in Saturday's Grade 3, $100,750 Sham Stakes at Santa Anita Park and vindicated those odds by cruising home an easy 4 1/4-length winner under jockey Elvis Trujillo.

The gray son of In Summation had already proven his mettle with runner-up efforts behind champion two-year-old finalist American Pharoah in a pair of Grade 1 contests last September, the FrontRunner and Del Mar Futurity, and was the star of this show for trainer Peter Miller.

"I didn't expect him to be this good (today)," Miller admitted. "I was hoping he was good enough to win at 90 percent (fitness). The water gets deeper from here on out, so we're going to have to step up our game and move forward off of this one.

"We'll see how the horse comes out, but I wouldn't rule out coming back in a month in the (Grade 2 Robert B.) Lewis (Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on February 7)," the trainer added. "The timing of it is good and when my horses are good, I like to run them. He's good right now so I'm going to run him."

Calculator and Elvis Trujillo have proven to be quite the team (Benoit Photos)

Calculator ended up being widest of all rounding the first turn of the one-mile Sham, breaking from post 7 and finding himself carried out by his inside rivals while even receiving a slight bump. Trujillo settled him into a stalking spot on the outside while St. Joe Bay proceeded to set splits of :22 4/5 and :46 1/5 while pressured by Pioneerof the West to his outside.

Trujillo gave his sophomore mount a bit of rein nearing the end of the backstretch and Calculator began moving forward. The duo briefly found themselves running in tandem with St. Joe Bay and Pioneerof the West rounding the turn, but shook loose and immediately began opening up upon hitting the stretch. Still running off the rail, Calculator was never challenged by the closing Rock Shandy and paid $3.20 to his many backers for stopping the clock in 1:34 4/5.

"It was a perfect trip. I went wide because I'd rather go wide than be in between horses, or caught inside. I wanted a clean trip," Trujillo explained. "He did it very easy today. Stretching out will be no problem for him; he's very good."

"I was very concerned (with where Calculator was on the first turn), because it looked like five or six of them were sending, and I said, 'Oh, no. We're going to be 10-wide,' but (Trujillo) saw the same thing and he adjusted and brought him back into maybe the three or four path. We had a wide trip, but there's less trouble out wide," Miller remarked.

"He went very nice. I think he's going to be a nice colt; he's still trying to figure it out, he's still green. I think he'll be better on the dirt rather than the turf," jockey Victor Espinoza praised his mount, runner-up Rock Shandy. "The way he works in the morning, I've always been very impressed. As a colt, he may be a late learner. It was a big step for him today."

"I was trying to watch all of them, and I thought I could run one, two, three for a minute, but they ran one, two, four, so it wasn't bad at all," grinned Miller, who saddled the trio of Calculator, Rock Shandy and fourth-placer St. Joe Bay.

Calculator was just too good for his Sham rivals (Benoit Photos)

Trying conventional dirt for the first time at Santa Anita next out in the FrontRunner, Calculator duplicated that performance with another runner-up effort by 3 1/4 lengths. He improved his career record to read 5-1-2-1 and boasts $193,500 in lifetime earnings thanks to the Sham.

The gray colt has proven to be quite a bargain for his owner after being purchased for $132,000 as an OBS April two-year-old. Calculator's juvenile campaign stamped him as a contender for the spring classics, and the Sham awarded the colt 10 points toward a starting berth in the Kentucky Derby on May 2. He added those to the four he already garnered for his FrontRunner second and currently sits in third on the Derby leaderboard.

Bred by Ocala Farm, Calculator is the first registered stakes winner out of the unraced Alphabet Soup mare Back to Basics. His second dam is Christy Love, who also produced multiple Grade 3-placed stakes-winning sire Distorted Reality and Grade 3 victor Atticus Kristy. Calculator's third dam is Amo, who is also the third dam of Preakness Stakes victor and multi-millionaire Shackleford as well as Grade 1 queen Lady Joanne.