By PTF · In the Money Media · April 2026

Todd Pletcher has run 66 horses in the Kentucky Derby. He’s won twice. That’s a 3% strike rate — from a trainer who wins at roughly 20% overall and has earned more money than any trainer in the history of the sport.

So what’s going on here? Is Pletcher actually bad at getting horses ready for the Derby? I’ll sound like a lawyer when I tell you, “it depends.”

The Record

Let’s start with the full picture. Through 2024, Pletcher’s Derby record stands at 66 starters: 2 wins, 2 seconds, 4 thirds. That’s 8 horses in the money from 65 finishers (excluding one DNF), an ITM rate of 12.3% — still yucky.

His two wins: Super Saver (2010, 8-1) and Always Dreaming (2017, 9-2). His two seconds: Invisible Ink (2001, 55-1) and Bluegrass Cat (2006, 30-1). His four thirds: Impeachment (2000), Revolutionary (2013), Danza (2014), and Audible (2018).

Those numbers look underwhelming at best for a Hall of Famer with eight Eclipse Awards. But they don’t tell the whole story. Not even close.

The Number That Changes Everything

We went through every one of Pletcher’s 66 Derby starters and sorted them by odds. What we found reframes the entire conversation.

Read that again. Nearly half of Pletcher’s Derby starters — 31 of 66 — went off at 20-1 or longer. Those are not horses expected to win. Many of them were in the race because their owners wanted to participate in the biggest day in the sport. As Pletcher himself has said: “There’s been a number of cases where the more prudent management might have been to pass the Derby and point toward the Preakness or easier races when we knew we were longshots. But I think that’s what a lot of clients are in the business for — to participate in what most people would consider to be the biggest race in the world.”

You can’t hold it against a trainer that he ran a 50-1 shot in the Derby because the owner wanted the experience. That’s client management, not bad training. And those 30 longshots are what drag his overall win rate down to 3%.

Strip them out and the picture changes dramatically. When Pletcher has sent a horse to the Derby at single-digit odds — a horse the market genuinely respects — he’s 2-0-3 from 17 starters. That’s a 29.4% ITM rate. In a 20-horse race with the best three-year-olds in the country, that’s not bad at all. That’s competitive.

The Case Against Pletcher

The data isn’t entirely kind, though. There’s a glaring dead zone in the middle of his record.

Pletcher has sent 18 horses to the Derby in the 10-1 to 19-1 range. Not one of them has finished in the top three. Zero. That’s the tier where you’d expect his “live but not favored” contenders to occasionally hit the board — and they never do. Horses like Materiality (11-1, 6th), Destin (18-1, 4th), Vino Rosso (14-1, 9th), and Magnum Moon (13-1, 19th). Good horses, reasonable prices, no results.

As Duke Matties of dukespicks.com put it on our Renegade Monster Pod: “Todd has had a horrible run in the Derby. Really, when you really break it down, it’s not good. His only two wins are Super Saver and Always Dreaming on sloppy racetracks.”

Duke’s concern extends beyond history. “7-2 is way too short in the Derby for a horse like Renegade, especially for a guy that has a two for 65 record. He’s blown up horses like Fierceness in the Derby. Overanalyze comes to mind. Mo Donegal. Horses that I thought should have won the Derby that didn’t run very well at all. That’s very disconcerting.”

The list of Pletcher horses who were supposed to win at this stage of proceedings but didn’t — Fierceness (4-1, 15th), Forte (3-1, scratched morning of the race), Overanalyze (16-1, 11th), Gemologist (8-1, 16th), Eskendereya (scratched days before) — is long enough to make you wonder about his choices for Derby preparation.

The Case for Pletcher

But here’s the other side. Pletcher himself frames it differently: “I guess you can spin stats however you want — to me, we’re 2-for-24 in the Derby,” he told BloodHorse, counting years rather than individual starters. “I don’t think that’s horrible.”

He’s right. Two wins in 24 years of trying is an 8% hit rate. The Derby is a 20-horse race — a random trainer could be expected to win about 5% of the time. Pletcher is above baseline when you look at it like that. And let’s not forget that his two wins mean he’s won more Derbys than all but a handful of trainers in history.

Mo Donegal was a serious horse who drew the rail in a 20-horse field and had a brutal trip — then came back five weeks later and won the Belmont. Was that bad training or just bad luck? I think a fair reading of the facts suggests the latter. And then there are the longshot seconds — Invisible Ink at 55-1 and Bluegrass Cat at 30-1 — which tell you that even when Pletcher’s horses aren’t expected to contend, they can still outrun their odds. That’s not the mark of a trainer who is out to lunch when it comes to prepping his horses for America’s most presigious race.

What About Renegade?

This is where the data meets the moment. Renegade is expected to go off somewhere around 7-2 to 9-2. That puts him squarely in the odds tier where Pletcher has actually performed — the 9-1 and shorter bracket, where he’s 2-0-3 with a 29.4% ITM rate.

Duke sees something different about this horse. “He’s not going to have a problem with the mile and a quarter,” Matties said. “The factor will be is if he’s reached his peak in the Todd Pletcher barn. If he didn’t peak out in the Arkansas Derby, he’s going to be one, two, three in this Derby because there’s just not enough out there.”

The route matters too. Pletcher won with Super Saver off the Tampa/Arkansas corridor. Renegade took the Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs to the Arkansas Derby — a similar path, modernized with wider spacing between races. “He hasn’t taken this route in a while,” Duke noted. “And he did do that with Super Saver.”

Duke’s proprietary pace figures — available to subscribers at dukespicks.com (use code ITM10 for a discount) — tell an encouraging story about Renegade’s closing ability. “He goes from around zero at the quarter to around 20 or 30 for the half to around 60 for six furlongs to around 90 for a mile. But he then hits higher numbers from the mile on. He goes 90 to 102. That’s a turn of foot. He’s sustaining his run every two furlongs. He’s getting faster. That’s hard to do.”

That acceleration profile suggests a horse who wants more ground, not less. If Renegade is still accelerating at a mile, the ten furlongs of the Derby should suit him perfectly, no matter what the specifics of the stride data say (we will cover this in a video over at the ITM YouTube channel).

The Verdict

Todd Pletcher is not actually bad in the Kentucky Derby. He’s a great trainer whose record is dragged down by 30 longshots who were never expected to win. When he has a horse the market genuinely respects — 9-1 or shorter — he’s in the money nearly 30% of the time. That’s the number that matters for anyone trying to assess Renegade’s chances.

But the headline number is real. And when you’re betting Renegade at 7-2, you’re betting that this is one of the times Pletcher gets it right — not one of the times his horse peaks too early, draws poorly, or simply doesn’t fire on the day.

The question isn’t whether Pletcher can win the Derby. He’s done it twice. The question is whether 7-2 is the right price given everything we know. Duke Matties doesn’t think so. But he also can’t deny that Renegade has the turn of foot, the spacing, and the form trajectory to be a genuine Derby winner.

Ten days from now, we’ll have another important data point to add to this conversation.

For Duke’s full analysis of Renegade and the rest of the Derby field, head to dukespicks.com — use code ITM10 for a discount on the Derby live stream featuring Duke and his brother Paul. And for proprietary speed figures, workout analysis, trip notes, and grid picks on every Derby contender, check out In the Money Plus.

Watch the full Renegade Monster Pod on the ITM YouTube channel.

Appendix: Todd Pletcher’s Complete Kentucky Derby Record (2000–2024)

Data verified from official Equibase result charts. 66 starters, 65 finishers. Graeme Hall (2000) eased and did not finish.