Saratoga: Summer 2019 meet data overview (jockey stats)

PHOTO CREDIT: NYRA/Susie Raisher

Overview

Dating back to 2015, there are roughly 400 races run each year at Saratoga race course.

Favorites overall win at a pretty heavy rate. The way I think this should be looked at is this: yes, favorites win almost 1 out of three races, but that leaves 2 out of 3 races to look elsewhere!

The payouts are the payouts referencing a dollar bet.

Oh, and just to talk about the winner that paid $116.25 for a dollar bet. That was a horse by the name of Perplexed. The horse was ridden by Luis Reyes, trained by D. Wayne Lukas and born in the first month of 2014 (maybe that makes him on the more mature side for his age which was 3 at this point). It was a sprint on a Sloppy (Sealed) track. Further, the horse carried only 113 pounds which was at least 6 pounds less than any other horse in the race. He hasn’t won since. But I do think this could be an informative example of maybe a confluence of a bunch of factors creating an insane result.

Now for the gorilla in the room, overall there was a sharp decline in the number of runners, and average number of runners per race. I think this may have been due to a significant number of very rainy days where a number of races were taken off the turf, and thus a number of horses were scratched.

The good news in all of this is that there is still plenty of interest, and thus money to win: handle per horse has been steadily increasing over the past four years, even with the declining number of runners since 2015:

So now that we’ve gone through that, how is it that we’re going to make money on the meet?

Jockeys

As a point of reference, here are some stats for how jockeys have fared on the dirt and turf regardless of distance for the past three years. These are sorted by ROI which may be why there are some names that show up at the top that may surprise. I think this is helpful to parse out some riders who may win a high percentage of the time, but don’t necessarily beat the takeout.

With that out of the way, let’s take a deeper look at jockeys and how they fare by course, and race-type.

Highlights (good/bad/ugly):

• Javier Castellano only hits at 13%, and you’ll lose about half the money you bet on him
• Jose Lezcano and Joel Rosario both boast 18% win percentages in turf sprints, and have positive expected winnings though Rosario’s ROI is likely lower due to his having lower priced mounts.
• Joe Bravo being 0 for 25 is somewhat surprising. He does slightly better in other types of races, but has been winless in these

Highlights:

• The big guns (e.g. Irad, John Velazquez, Manny Franco, Joel Rosario, Javier Castellano, etc.) have above average win percentages but sub par ROIs.
• Luis Saez – one of my faves doesn’t do too well in routes and has only won 5 from 112 mounts.
• Dylan Davis – surprisingly to me – is winless in turf routes as of yet. I think there might be some potential that this doesn’t last very long as he appears to be increasingly getting more and better mounts…

Highlights:

• Jose and Irad both win almost 1 of every five races they ride in. The more interesting piece here is that while Jose Ortiz has a positive ROI, Irad has a much lower ROI which may be due to his riding more heavily bet horses than Jose (check expected wins, which is derived from the odds of all horses ridden by each jockey).
• Florent Geroux and Julien Leparoux were a combined 5 for 106 in Turf routes, but on the inner turf that’s a significant difference (15 for 161) – almost 10% as opposed to just under 5%.

Highlights:

• The top two on this list should mostly be ignored. Luis Reyes has had 2 winners that combined paid out $126 averaging to about 60-1 odds. Similarly with Samuel Camacho, Jr. 2 winners at about 30-1 each is all that it takes (to be on top of a list sorted by ROI).
• Other than two lower percentage jockeys, no one has an ROI of above 1. There are a few who beat the takeout, though those are expected (e.g. Rosario, et. al.).
• Javier Castellano hits at a rate of 17%, yet his ROI is pretty significantly below even the takeout. Similar is true for Manny Franco and Rajiv even worse (though some improvement could be expected from the latter two this year)

Highlights:

• Johnny V and Javier Castellano run the show here. With Castellano hitting at 26% and Johnny V at 31%, both seem like great plays in dirt routes.
• The Ortiz brothers punch well below the heavier weights with ROIs less than the takeout rate.
• Jose Lezcano, in contrast to being at the top of the leaderboards in other categories has only 1 win in 45 route races.
• Florent Geroux is very much worth calling out here. It appears that he’s only won on super short priced horses – essentially even money given his 4 wins have paid a total of $9 (which is inclusive of the initial $4 investment). This is an extremely low ROI ($0.39) for a dollar investment even with a win rate of 17%.
• To take that even further, the bottom 7 jockeys on this chart are only a combined 16 for 253 which is only 6% whereas each of them on their own is expected to win