Looking a little bit into horses with 4 or fewer starts. Just looked into the last 10 years but was interested to see the the trainers for those horses. If I went back 11 years, the numbers would actually look better for lightly raced horses since Big Brown and Denis of Cork both finished in the money in 2008.
Pletcher: 9 starts, 1 finish in Top 5 (Danza in 2014)
Baffert: 4 starts, 2 finishes in Top 5 (Justify in 2018, Bodemeister in 2012)
Brown: 2 starts, 0 finishes in Top 5 (My Man Sam finished 11th, Shagaf DNF in 2016)
Motion: 1 start, 1 Winner (Animal Kingdom in 2011)
Hollendorfer: 1 start, 1 finish in Top 5 (Battle of Midway in 2017)
Sharp: 1 start, 0 finishes in Top 5 (Girvin finished 13th in 2017)
Mott: 1 start, 0 finishes in Top 5 (Hofburg finished 7th in 2018)
Zito: 1 start, 0 finishes in Top 5 (Dialed In finished 8th in 2011)
Ice: 1 start, 0 finishes in Top 5 (Summer Bird finished 17th in 2009)
For Pletcher, Noble Indy finished 17th, Magnum Moon 19th, Patch 14th, Outwork 14th, Materiality 6th, Itsaknockout 9th, Verrazano 14th, Dunkirk 15th. Baffert’s other horses in that time frame were Chitu who finished 9th in 2014 and Midnight Interlude, 16th in 2011.
Anyway, for trainers not named Pletcher, they’ve got a record of 12-2-1-1, which is 17% win, 33% ITM. All-time, Baffert has a Derby record of 28-5-3-3, which is 18% win, 39% ITM.
I guess my thought is - is the fact that a horse has 4 or fewer starts really that big of a negative for them? It’s not exactly fair to just throw out Pletcher’s starters but he also sends a lot of lightly raced horses to the derby and he’s clearly skewing the numbers in recent years.
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