A look at the Belmont Meet so Far

It’s Belmont Stakes week. I’ve spent a good deal of time buying clothes and hats as I’ll be at the track both Friday and Saturday, but I also looked at some Belmont data and I thought I would share it with everyone so they have some time to maybe use it in preparation for the weekend.

Jockey stats

First, we took a look at jockeys so far for this meet. The table below represents the stats for the meet so far, and excludes jockeys with less than 10 starts.

Some notes:

• Clearly Jose Lezcano is on a bit of a tear. He has an ROI of almost $1.40, and an impact value near 1.4 as well. One thing to note here is that last week he was winning at an even greater clip.
• Manny Franco who was on a crazy winning streak a few months ago has cooled off since.
• The “upper tier” of jockeys (Ortiz’s, Castellano, Velasquez, Rosario) are all sporting sub break-even ROIs – potentially something to keep in mind if betting them to win, but obviously, they win at such high rates it’s probably unwise to exclude.

Trainers

Similar to jockeys, I took a look at how trainers have been doing so far at Belmont this year. The below table filters out trainers with less than 10 starts so far this year.

Some notes:

• I am astounded that Chad Brown has a flat bet ROI that does not lose money ($1.23). I think it’s due to a longer priced winner that ran on the turf a few weeks back. But, still what an incredibly high return on merely betting a 33% trainer to win.
• Equally astounding is that Steve Asmussen is 0 for 17 so far at Belmont. Granted, the public only expects him to win at 13%.
• Mark Hennig and Shug McGaughey are a combined 2 for 36.

Specific trainer stats

Since Todd Pletcher has starters in over half of the races on Belmont Stakes day I took a quick look at how he has done on the various courses at sprints and routes, coming off of different length layoffs

Sprints

Routes

Notes:

• Todd Pletcher has never won with a first time starter since 2015 in routes, no matter the surface.
• Dirt sprints are where Pletcher thrives with first time starters. Turf sprints are similar to his record in routes.
• Off of long layoffs of over 180 days, it appears that Pletcher only does poorly on the inner turf.

Shippers

The tables below look at shippers with 5 or more starts at Belmont since 2015. I’ve only looked at sprints given the sample size for route races at the unique distances is very small.

The tables are sorted by highest to lowest win percentages.

One turn inner turf sprints

• The most interesting stat here to me is that Gulfstream shippers appear to do well on the inner turf in sprint races. With over a hundred runners and a positive ROI, any shippers coming off longer layoffs this weekend from Gulfstream might be interesting plays.

One turn turf sprints

• Santa Anita sticks out to me here as not having a winner ship to the turf course, especially as it contrasts with the 2 for 9 on the inner turf.
• Churchill boasts a very high winning percentage on the turf course, and has a profitable ROI.

One turn dirt sprints

• The top four tracks all boast positive ROIs. Keeneland and Santa Anita have more significant sample sizes and might be interesting plays over the coming weeks.
• Churchill and Monmouth Park have negative returns on investment, and low strike rates while both have sent a significant number of runners to Belmont’s dirt course.

Lengths analysis

In order to see how winners have won races, I took a look at the total lengths behind of the winning horse at each of the recorded points of call. I looked at the mean, median and max for each of the winners at the distances listed below on the various courses at Belmont. The results below are for 2019 only,

Dirt

Route races on the dirt appear to be more favorable to runners close to the lead at each point of call. It’s important to note that races up to 9 furlongs are run around 1 turn, and it does appear that these races play somewhat like sprints, in that they favor front runners.

Inner turf

Overall, on the inner turf, it seems that both for routes and sprints, it is advantageous for horses to be close to leaders, at least for races run at less than 10 furlongs.

Turf

The widener turf course to me looks like it has generally played more like traditional turf races with more horses coming off the pace, as is evidenced by the higher means and medians for the winners than similar distances on other courses (e.g. inner turf and dirt).