13 Del Mar Futurity's in 21 Years for Baffert

[Silver Charm]

A staggering statistic. I do believe he started that streak 21 years ago with none of the than Silver Charm. Mind boggling run for the best big race dirt trainer in the business

[plasticman]

He\'s an amazing trainer, certainly the best on the west coast.

[TempletonPeck]

I\'d say he\'s the best in the United States, and it doesn\'t look that close to me:

He wins more per start than next-best Chad Brown, YTD BB getting $27.7k per start vs. Chad $27.3k per start, in spite of BB racing for lower purses, SoCal vs. NYRA, and Chad running away with the Saratoga training title. (Admittedly, Chad starts a lot more horses.)

Compare numbers from 2015 or 2014:
2014: $33.8k/start across 426 starts for BB, vs. $26.5k/start across 581 starts for Chad (could be said Jimmy Jerkens was next-best in 2014, $28.8k per, over 145 starts).

2015: $41.8k/start, 388 starts for BB, Chad $26.4k/start across 768 starts.

The only guy working the same circuit as BB who is even close in terms of $/start is Desormeaux, getting $23k per start this year.

[Fairmount1]

How does his per start average look on turf?

[TempletonPeck]

Not so great, and a very small sample:

28 starts, $280k in earnings for $10k/start.

If you go to http://www.equibase.com/stats/View.cfm?tf=year&tb=trainer you can play around with various filters for stakes/graded/surface/years/etc.

If you isolate for dirt and synthetic (can\'t take out synth, it\'s either all (which I used in my previous post), turf, or dirt + synth), you get these numbers this year:

6   Kiaran P. McLaughlin   196   $31,373   18%
7   Chad C. Brown   128   $30,251   30%   
8   Bob Baffert   268   $29,977   28%
9   James A. Jerkens   91   $29,214   22%

Which, IMO, just makes it clearer that BB is the best dirt trainer in the country. He starts far more than others around the same $ win rate, wins at nearly as high a % rate, and wins nearly as much money per start in spite of competing for much less. (Desormeaux is 10th on this list, 127 starts and $27.1k per, given the purse disparity you can make a pretty strong case he\'s next best...)

[Dana666]

When it comes to 2 & 3 year old\'s nobody ever did it better than Baffert, no question. Only God knows how he could get so many 2 year old\'s to run as fast as his barn does. I bet if you averaged his t-g number for first time starters he\'d be #1 in history. Yeah 90 percent of them are off the track by the middle/end of their 3 year old season. But that\'s not his concern. He gets them to run unreal early, when they\'re used up, he moves on to the next crop. A lot like Lukas, really.

But when it\'s all said and done, he won\'t even be close to what Chad Brown in all categories will accomplish. Chad Brown excels now in almost every category with the exception perhaps of older horses on dirt (?), but he\'s now even branching into 2 year old\'s with great success, and I don\'t think it will be too long before he gets his first derby. There is no one better than Chad Brown all things considered. It\'s scary when you think how young he is and how many years he\'s hopefully got left.  Does anyone think Baffert could win 39 races at Saratoga???

[plasticman]

Why wouldn\'t he be able to with all else being equal?

[magicnight]

Temp, no knock on Baffert, but having only half as many starts as CB and winning the Classic the last two years obviously juices those averages. Last year AP won more money than all of Baffert\'s other horses combined.

[richiebee]

Baffert\'s record with young dirt horses without equal. My personal opinion is
that it comes from Baffert\'s willingness to work horses further and faster in the
morning than some of his fellow trainers (and his staff\'s ability to keep these
youngsters sound after their morning exertions).

Before anointing him however, I would like to see his record with auction
purchases. In 1989, Joe Bragan wrote a book entitled \"Lukas at Auction\" (I think
the intro was by Steven Crist). The book as I recall outlined that for all the
races DWL won for Eugene Klein in the 1980s, the stable operated at a loss given
many high priced auction purchases which either never made the races, or earned
far less in their racing careers than they were purchased for. Would like to see
a similar study done on BB\'s auction purchases to get a more complete picture of
where BB stands among great trainers.

Of course with young horses pushed for a fast auction breeze, and changing hands
two or three times before arriving at the racetrack, many of these youngsters are
unfortunately damaged goods before they even breeze 5/8s of a mile.

[TempletonPeck]

Fair enough, and of course the argument on the other side is \"The guy who wins two of the biggest dirt races in the world back to back holds a pretty strong hand in the \'best big race dirt trainer\' discussion.\"

[magicnight]

Was only pointing out that one of the stats you used often speaks more about one horse than one trainer. Kathy Ritvo averaged $80K per start in 2013. What does that make her?

[TempletonPeck]

gotcha. That\'s why I only included full-time/big operations (i.e. No Aidan O\'Brien\'s, no Kathy Ritvo\'s)...

And I do also understand \"best\" is a thing which can\'t be measured, just offering a little support for my position :-)

[Dana666]

Because he has so few grass horses? When do you ever see Baffert win a grass race, esp. with an older horse???

[Dana666]

Baffert actually sent out 785 turf runners out of 6488 starters in the t-g trainer profiles--that\'s more than I thought, wins at  about 13% on grass.

[plasticman]

My point was all being equal, But you\'re right in order to have any shot at 39 you would need a lot of turf monsters, something he doesn\'t have, I\'m sure he would be able to get those types if he was eastern based, it just doesn\'t make any sense to have an elite turf horse stabled in so cal.