Betting on Baffert’s horses is ‘losing proposition’
Bob Baffert is a great trainer and a bad bet.
The white-haired wonder won his second Triple Crown and a career-high 32% of his races last year, but if you had bet an equal amount on each of Baffert’s 348 starters, you would have lost 7 cents on every dollar. The price of his extraordinary success has come to include meager payoffs.
Baffert is so good with high-end horses that wealthy owners entrust him with their finest prospects and seasoned handicappers have learned to look elsewhere for value. His reputation depresses the odds on his entries to such an extent that more than half of Baffert’s 2018 winners, 61 out of 113, paid 2to-1 or less.
According to Equibase, Baffert’s average winning payout last year, $5.73, was barely half of the national average of $11.23 for thoroughbred flat races.
“My horses do get overbet,” Baffert said. “There are a lot of times I’ll send a horse up there and (gamblers) will ask me, ‘What do you think? Is it a real favorite or a fake favorite?’ ”
Mindful of wagering patterns as well as merit, Churchill Downs oddsmaker Mike Battaglia reflexively shortens the odds on Baffert’s entries. A horse that might otherwise be 10-1 or 12-1 in Battaglia’s morning line will be 6-1 or 8-1 if it is based in Baffert’s barn.
“Same with (Todd) Pletcher and Chad Brown,” Battaglia said. “When you see their names, you know they’re going to bet them down . ... It’s a tribute. You know they have their horses ready.”
If there is a sure thing to be found at the racetrack, it is that the surest things tend to have a short shelf life. Pletcher showed a positive return on investment (ROI) in 1997 — meaning that betting $2 to win on each of his starters would have produced a profit — but he hasn’t been able to duplicate that feat over a full year since. Brad Cox has shown a positive ROI in six different years, most recently in 2015, but as his stature has risen and the caliber of his horses has improved, his ROI has receded.
The same can be said of Mike Maker, who produced a positive ROI four times in five years between 2004 and 2008 but not once in the last decade.
With American racetracks averaging a 17.3% takeout rate from parimutuel pools, beating a system heavily stacked in favor of the house requires extraordinary performance and, it appears, a relatively low profile.
“You’re a victim of your own fate there,” trainer Dale Romans said. “The more successful you get, the lower your odds are going to get, so the less chance you have to overcome it. It’s just simple math. When you take out 18% off the top, in the long, big picture of a lot of races, it has to work out that way.”
Exceptions exist, though they are often temporary and track-, class- or surface-specific. Jockey Mike Smith, who won the Triple Crown for Baffert last spring aboard Justify, had won 32% of his 2019 races through April 27 and would have returned a 19% profit to anyone with the foresight to bet an equal amount on his every mount.
“I’m inclined to bet Mike Smith even if he breaks from the gate and runs on his own 2 legs,” California retiree Cory Whetstone tweeted last month.
Jason Servis, who is training Maximum Security for the Kentucky Derby, won 35 of his 77 starts at the Gulfstream meet that ended March 31. Betting an equal amount on all 77 of those starters would have produced a 25% profit.
“That’s not done by accident,” Servis said of his lofty win rate, now 31% for all 2019 races. “I think the thing with me is I didn’t start training till I was 41 or 42. So when I started, they had statistics. You had who was good on the grass long, who was good on the grass short.
“I had an owner that was meticulous with stats. He used to always tell me, ‘Jay, if you keep your percentage up, your phone will always ring.’ And that stuck with me from Day 1 . ... When I run, I want to be 2-1 or I’m not going in that spot.”
As of the start of Churchill Downs’ spring meet, Servis’ strategy had produced the highest career ROI among this year’s Derby trainers, returning 95 cents on the dollar. Hall of Famer Richard Mandella, trainer of Derby favorite Omaha Beach, owned the best 2019 ROI at $1.14 per $1 bet.
As Romans observed, though, the more you win, the harder it becomes to remain under the radar and underpriced. Tom Amoss, whose 26% career win rate ranks highest among American racing’s 50 winningest trainers, began noticing a disconnect between the quality of his horses and their odds as his own reputation grew.
“I started seeing it in New Orleans after the first four or five years I started training,” Amoss said. “It just became an expectation. I don’t look at the odds board and think ‘Wow, what am I doing at these odds?’ every time the race runs. But there have been plenty of times — plenty of times — where they’re going into the starting gate and I look at the odds and I go, ‘There is no way my horse should be this short a price.’ ”
Baffert’s 3-year-old filly Chasing Yesterday paid $2.10 on a $2 bet in winning a March race at Sunland Park. Of his first 18 victories this year, only one paid as much as 5-1. When one of Baffert’s horses runs in a small field, he will sometimes advise bettors not to bet too much because their potential return is so paltry.
“I can’t imagine any business plan that involves betting on just Bob Baffert’s horses,” Amoss said. “It’s a losing proposition. The same is true of Tom Amoss. A sharp handicapper loves tracks where everybody migrates to one or two trainers and he can see what’s good value elsewhere.
“At a track like that, I tell handicappers not to bet on Tom Amoss, but find where Tom Amoss is vulnerable and bet against him.”
Always looking for an edge, Baffert said he’d like to see trainers get a piece of the wagering handle on their horses. If the casual bettor is going to respond to name recognition, Baffert would like to better exploit his growing fame.
“I used to be ‘The horse guy,’ ” he said. “Now they know me as ‘Baffert.’ So I’ve come a long way.”