And I hope my response is not too late to be counted by John. The best score available and not a bad move in a lot of cases, but here the S is worth a lot more to me than the 8 points this adds over the singular. Minor consideration is we may recoup hook points if opp. When I first glanced at this position, I was inclined to choose this move, but I took another, longer look and decided I had reasons to prefer others.
Score is good, opp's comebacks are limited, and openings do favor our leave.
However, it would be nicer if LTS were accompanied by at least one vowel. Here I have to interject a reminder about the depleted pool vs. generic optimal leave idea. In most cases, it would be a clear choice to keep an E before an O, and in many cases I have a personal aversion to O's that would cause me to hold any other vowel ahead of it, but not here. The first law of Scrabble Entropy is that the more there are of any given letter in the pool, the more likely you are to draw an unfair number of that given letter in one rack, and that goes double for all vowels. And to anyone who wonders if I actually follow these ideas in tourney play, the answer is YES, just watch me.