Summer starts early at Saratoga this year.
Saratoga also gets a five-day work week for the first time in like ever. In any case, this meet will likely have the usual flare of Chad Brown dominance.
What made 2018 so freaky was the abject way Brown mopped the floor with the competition. He won 46 races. If the people behind Makers Mark bourbon are smart—and they are—they need to make a limited batch of their Makers Mark 46 in honor of Brown. I mean, he averaged more than a win a day over the 40-race meet.
Coming in second place nearly 30 wins behind Brown was the old saw Todd A. Pletcher, who had 19 shiners. There was a time when 19 wins was kickin’ ass and takin’ names, but now 19 wins is what Brown calls July.
But on Father’s Day, down on the Jersey Shore, Pletcher showed some life with a three-year-old colt that might put some sugar in his coffee. King for a Day defeated Maximum Security, the pseudo-winner of the Kentucky Derby. Now, Maximum Security had an excuse. He stumbled coming out of the gate. Few horses can overcome a stumble no matter how classy they are. So Pletcher’s horse re-ignited the barn.
Saratoga isn’t the same without Pletcher in the picture. For as long as I’ve been following horse racing —and certainly as long as I’ve been writing about it—Pletcher has been a Category 5 hurricane at the Spa. On the back of brilliant two-year-olds, talented Triple Crown runners and a few older horses and mares, Pletcher and his call-me-maybe jockey John Velazquez did special things. There’s Montana and Rice, Brady and Belichick, Jordan and Pippen and Johnny V. and Toddy P.
Now, despite getting dusted like Thanos, Pletcher did win nearly $2 million purses at Saratoga last year, so let’s not feel too bad for the guy, but still. Brown won $4.43 million from 171 starts. He won 27% of the time and was in the money 64% of the time. The only thing more predictable is tides.
Frankly, Saratoga is more interesting when Pletcher is on his game. Saratoga has never been a one-horse race, though the past few it has been more of a match race between Pletcher and Brown, with the apex of that competition coming in 2017 when Pletcher nosed Brown 40 wins to 39 wins. Rounding out the trifecta was Bill Mott with 13 wins.
How long can a trainer truly be dominant? Was Pletcher’s run from say, 2006-2017 the greatest stretch for any trainer in the history of the sport? It could be that he was the logical conclusion to what his mentor D. Wayne Lukas started back in the 80s. Put ’Em on a Plane Dwayne built a national empire, franchising out his name from coast to coast.
Pletcher took the concept and further perfected it. And fewer and fewer horses going to fewer and fewer trainers, it was inevitable that fewer than 10 trainers would train the bulk of the graded stakes winners over the last 15 years or so.
The usual suspects are Steve Asmussen, Pletcher, Bob Baffert, Chad Brown and maybe Kieran McLaughlin in North America. In 2004, Pletcher led the country in earnings, but Baffert and Asmussen were right there.
Ok, so according to Equibase.com, Pletcher was leading trainer in money in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. In 2008, 2009, 2016 and 2017 he was second. But in 2018 he was third. Call the fire department, hit the panic button.
But wasn’t that the case for this year’s Kentucky Derby? Pletcher, he of routinely saddling 20-25% of the Kentucky Derby field had only two starters. They were by far some of the weakest he had ever brought to the Derby. Brown, for all his Mothra-like torching of the earth, didn’t have a Triple Crown horse worth your breath.
It all had the feeling of Pletcher losing his fastball, but he admitted that his crew at the Pletcher-verse didn’t evaluate talent quite as well and if you miss a season or two in terms of scouting, it’s not like you can go out and sign a free agent to turn the franchise around. You miss a season, it takes a full calendar year to reboot.
So, yes, we might not see a great Saratoga out of Pletcher. And maybe Brown runs away with the meet again on the strength of his turf campaigns, but if King for a Day is any indication of what might be lurking in the bushes back there on the Oklahoma Training side of Union Avenue, this could be the dogfight of 2017 all over again.
And it’ll be the greatest of all things to look up your entries and see what Pletcher has in store. Say what you will, the guy rarely disappoints.
Brendan O’Meara is a freelance writer and author of Six Weeks in Saratoga.
