Pletcher‘s Previous Derby Horses

[Molesap]

Pletcher's record in the Derby has been well documented and I do not ned to remind this list of their overall record. I do think you need to look at the merit of each horse overall, but you must consider the trainer as well. Given it seems he may end up with a number of starters this year, it would be prudent to check his history in some detail. Pletcher\'s record in the Derby for the placings that matter in terms of wagering is that he has had 45 starters with 1 win, 2 seconds, 3 thirds and 2 fourths and 0 fifths. Just 17.8% of his Derby starters have finished with a placing that has returned pari-mutuel dollars in some form. He has not had much success in this race, but what about his horses that have run well, what can we say about them?

One way to look at it is that of his three exacta finishers, all three of them did not win their previous two races prior to the Derby. In fact 62.5% of his superfecta finishers lost both of their last two preps. The only horse to win two preps and finish in the money for Pletcher in the Derby was Revolutionary. Pletcher also had two horses win one of their previous two preps and finish in the superfecta. If you look at just the last prep, 23/45 of his runners won their last prep race, while 22/45 did not win their final prep race before the Derby. Their respective records:

Won last race prior to the Derby = 23-0-0-2-0 (17 finished in the back half of the field)
Did not win last race prior to the Derby = 22-1-2-1-2 (14 finished in the back half of the field)

In terms of odds, his horses under 10/1 have not done that poorly – here is the breakdown:
odds below 10/1 = 12-1-0-3-0
odds from 10/1 to 24/1 = 13-0-0-0-1
odds 25/1 and above  = 20-0-2-0-1

A statistician might argue that there have not been enough trials in either case to warrant a reasonable conclusion, but certainly there seems to be a trend. First, Pletcher horses do not run very well in the Derby and second, the ones that have success tend not to be winners of their last race, but are less than 10/1. Here is a further breakdown:

45 total starters
1 winner (2.2%)
3 exacta finishers (6.7%)
6 trifecta finishers (13.3%)
8 superfecta finishers (17.8%)

23 starters won last prep race
0 winners  (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
0 exacta finishers (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
2 trifecta finishers (8.7% of group, 4.4% of total)
2 superfecta finishers (8.7% of group, 4.4% of total)

22 starters did not win last prep race
1 winner (4.5% of group, 2.2% of total)
3 exacta finishers (13.6% of group, 6.7% of total)
4 trifecta finishers (18.2% of group, 8.8% of total)
6 superfecta finishers (27.3% of group, 13.3% of total)

9 starters won both last 2 preps
0 winners (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
0 exacta finishers (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
1 trifecta finisher (11.1% of group, 2.2% of total)
1 superfecta finisher (11.1% of group, 2.2% of total)

21 starters won exactly 1 of last 2 preps
0 winners (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
0 exacta finishers (0.0% of group, 0.0% of total)
1 trifecta finisher (4.8% of group, 2.2% of total)
2 superfecta finishers (9.5% of group, 4.4% of total)

15 starters won exactly 0 of last 2 preps
1 winner (6.7% of group, 2.2% of total)
3 exacta finishers (20.0% of group, 6.7% of total)
4 trifecta finishers (26.7% of group, 8.9% of total)
5 superfecta finishers (33.3% of group, 11.1% of total))

[Furious Pete]

How many of those winners have been lightly raced, winning easy and in hand, while running slow figures?

It seems like the consensus is that he\'s either racing them too fast, or too slow, for anyone to make a bet.

Maybe he finally has figured something out?

If so, how it could pay to be young! That market is basically made up of money unable to separate much between yesterday and 1991. I\'ll bet Jimbo has lost zillions betting Pletcher in the derby already, no wonder he stears clear!

That smells of opportunity.  

I for one would certainly look a bit longer than 30 seconds on this sheet, it could well end up as the value play. It\'s not impossible that come 6th of May we\'re looking at a sheet that looks a lot like Orb\'s.

Heraclitus once said, admittedly poorly translated, that "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it\'s not the same river and he\'s not the same man."

Todd Pletcher is not the same trainer every year, and Kentucky Derby is not the same race as it used to be. Nor is Horse Racing. Nor is the overall standard of 3yo\'s. I\'m a bit sceptical to the idea of blindly leaning towards the statistical base rate when this base rate is based upon very few events, spanning over many years.

Talking statistics.

I\'m actually 50 % betting Pletcher in the derby (Super Saver and Materiality). Guess that makes Always Dreaming a must bet for me at anything above even money!

[johnnym]

Unless I over looked it, since 2000 no Pletcher horse that came in the superfecta has ever ran a # lower than a 1 prior to the Derby.

[big18741]

Correct.

Super Saver came in with paired 2\'s

Bluegrass Cat ran a 1 at Tampa then bounced in the Bluegrass.

Invisible Ink ran a 1 in January then threw in a couple of bounces.

Danza and Revolutionary both coming in with 2\'s

None of them ran new tops in the Derby.

[Fairmount1]

May I respectfully disagree with the following statement?

Molesap wrote:  In terms of odds, his horses under 10/1 have not done that poorly – here is the breakdown:
odds below 10/1 = 12-1-0-3-0:

Since 2001 there have been 68 horses at exactly 10.00-1 or less (I picked this year as the year that the field had more than 13 betting interests although Pletcher started training Derby horses in 2000 with two of them hitting the super including Impeachment as a four horse Entry at 6.20-1 and More Than Ready at 20-1 in his first attempt).

All horses at 10.00-1 or less since and including 2001 Derby.
68-9-8-9-5

13.2% of the horses at 10-1 or less finished 1st.
24.9% of the horses at 10-1 or less finished 1st or 2nd.
38.1% of the horses at 10-1 or less finished 1st or 2nd or 3rd.
45.4% of the horses at 10-1 or less finished 1st or 2nd or 3rd of 4th.

All sixteen years a horse under 10-1 has hit the superfecta.  
In six of those 16 years (37.5 percent) only 1 horse has hit the superfecta at 10-1 or less while all ten of the rest have had at least two horses at 10-1 or less hit the super (62.5%).

[jimbo66]

Molesap,

You put some time in and I respect the effort. Not sure there are any nuggets in the information though.  Sometimes a lemon is a lemon.  Pletcher derby horses, until proven otherwise, are like Dubai prepped horses, lemons.  For years, the Pletcher horses were underlays, not so much anymore, because while us horseplayers may be slow to learn new lessons, most of us eventually figure it out.

Pete,

You may be the exception to that last sentence...  I haven\'t lost a fortune betting Pletcher derby horses but I have used some of them from time to time, specifically Materiality a couple years back.  That said, if you think there is going to be value in betting on a horse that went off at 6-1 in the futures pool that closed Sunday than you are in trouble.

Must murky derby picture I can remember in years.  At first, when I saw the 6-1 on Always Dreamin I thought it was even dumber than the 8-1 on Mubtahij a few years back, or the even money people took on Unique Bella last month (I am redboarding neither as I commented sarcastically about both of them at the time).  But who exactly were people supposed to bet.  Don\'t get me wrong, 6-1 on Always Dreamin is insane.  But do you want 9-1 on Gunnevara who ran about 4 steps on saturday and looks cooked?  10-1 on Classic Empire, who didn\'t run at all last race, hasn\'t trained right and may or may not show up.  Girvin off the 91 beyer (don\'t know the TG figure, but can\'t believe it is much better).  Malagacy at 16-1, trained by the worst Derby trainer in history, coming off a slow slow race where he staggered home, now going 1 1/4 miles?  

Ugly situation.  The 1 1/8 preps always separate the men from the boys (usually Miff\'s job to say that each year, but alas he is still MIA).  I guess after this coming weekend we will have some horses to get excited about, but I don\'t know.  tHis may be one of those crazier years.

Good luck

Jim

[Molesap]

Fairmount1

You, of course, are correct. I should have been more careful in terms of what I said - what I meant was that relatively speaking (i.e. comparing Pletcher to himself), he has done better with horses less than 10/1 as half of his superfecta finishes have come from that group that only represents 12 starters. While it is not surprising he has done better with lower priced horses, I found that idea to mentally be in opposition with idea that his horses that have not been as successful in prep races have been the ones that ran better in the Derby. I had not done a breakdown of horses at 10/1 or less the way you put it - interesting indeed. My guess is that since they replaced the graded stakes earnings system for the points based system in 2013, there has been a much greater percentage of horses under 10/1 in the superfecta as the race seemingly has been more formful.

[Niall]

People who have been at this a lot longer than I and have wagered substantially more as well always say about Pletcher, Brown, Baffert... take the longer of the 2. If there\'s value to be had, thats where you find it. Arrogate and Danza come to mind. Sure looks like its gonna be crazy!

[TempletonPeck]

jimbo66 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But who exactly
> were people supposed to bet.  Don\'t get me wrong,
> 6-1 on Always Dreamin is insane.  But do you want
> 9-1 on Gunnevara who ran about 4 steps on saturday
> and looks cooked?  10-1 on Classic Empire, who
> didn\'t run at all last race, hasn\'t trained right
> and may or may not show up.  Girvin off the 91
> beyer (don\'t know the TG figure, but can\'t believe
> it is much better).  Malagacy at 16-1, trained by
> the worst Derby trainer in history, coming off a
> slow slow race where he staggered home, now going
> 1 1/4 miles?  

The takeaway here, IMO, is \"don\'t bet derby futures.\"

[TempletonPeck]

Furious Pete Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I\'m a bit sceptical to the idea
> of blindly leaning towards the statistical base
> rate when this base rate is based upon very few
> events, spanning over many years.

I think this is excellent advice. We look at samples of 10 and 20 races here, in cases where it could take 1000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 to reach a long run, we have no idea. It could certainly take a sample of a few hundred to see any meaningful trend. \"Stats\" based on a sample of 10 or 20 races aren\'t stats, they\'re anecdotes.

These \'stats\' on Pletcher Derby horses are a fine example of this problem: he has one winner in 45. If he has another this year, he\'ll almost DOUBLE his win percentage!

In another gambling community I freuqent, poker, it took a few years of online play for people to realize the long run is reallllllly long. In 2005, we thought 50,000 hands was a good sample from which to draw some really accurate stats about winrate/standard dev/etc. By 2010, it was accepted that you probably needed a matter of *millions* of hands.

So for the purposes of figuring out who\'s going to win a Derby, I guess what I\'m saying is this: by all means look for trends, but don\'t marry yourself to them because you can\'t know yet what weight they should be attributed, if any - \"Strong opinions, weakly held.\"

[jimbo66]

Templeton,

We don\'t get to have 1,000 or 10,000 derby starters for a trainer.  Sure, would be great to get huge sample sizes.

But you know what, 46 Derby starters for 1 trainer is a VERY BIG SAMPLE size when it comes to trainers of Kentucky Derby starters.  How many trainers have had more starters than Pletcher?  More starters with top figures off of winning grade 1 preps?

How many times does Pletcher have to \"crap the bed\" on Derby day to get your attention?  200 starters over 100 years?  

We live in the age of over-analysis.  Until proven otherwise, put a line through the Pletcher starters, put a line through the Dubai starters (which doesn\'t help much).  

Let\'s see patterns, two year old foundations, paired top or near tops heading into the Derby, horses who still have reasonable logical progression to make off of their 2 year old tops, nice spacing into the Derby without a huge jump up and no big negative number in their last prep.   Let\'s see those things for all horses not trained by the WORST DERBY TRAINER of the last 100 years.

Jim

[TGJB]

Jimbo-- the first sentence of the last paragraph qualifies as a mini Derby seminar.

[TempletonPeck]

Hi Jim,

You mention, \" . . . 46 Derby starters for 1 trainer is a VERY BIG SAMPLE size when it comes to trainers of Kentucky Derby starters.\" And of course I agree with you - within the frame of reference \'trainers of Kentucky Derby starters,\' 46 is a lot! What I\'m saying is, for any meaningful statistical analysis, 46 is peanuts! Of course, 46 is all we have, so we\'re cursed with it, since that\'s the subject we\'re studying.

I think you may have given up on my post before the end, where I said \" . . . by all means look for trends, but don\'t marry yourself to them because you can\'t know yet what weight they should be attributed, if any - \"Strong opinions, weakly held.\"

IOW, as it applies to this year, we might say \"While we would probably all agree that Pletcher has been a huge bust in the Derby, if Always Dreaming gets into the gate at 25/1, you may think about betting him!\"

[ajkreider]

Especially since there hasn\'t been a clear pattern for the winner in recent years.  Nyquist held to form, but Whitmore didn\'t.  Chrome ran the number he always ran. Orb paired his big negative number, Big Brown did that one better.  Animal Kingdom\'s pattern was similar to Twice the Appeal.  Super Saver moved forward off the paired top, but Dublin didn\'t.  Etc.

[BitPlayer]

Last year\'s Derby/Oaks seminar included some stats about Pletcher.  Sample was small, but his horses coming from Florida had yet to pair their top in the Derby.  Destin did not change that.  Those coming from elsewhere did better.