Kentucky Derby 2025: Why Baeza Should Be In The Race But Isn't, Yet

Forbes

01-05-2025

2025's First Derby Scratch: Tappan Street during the April 25 morning work in which jockey Luis Saez noticed him favoring the leg that was eventually diagnosed with the condylar fracture, causing his scratch from the May 3 race. (Photo by)
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Just a week out from the $5-million 151st running of the Kentucky Derby, top contender Tappan Street was scratched by his team for a condylar fracture, causing the first alternate runner, Kenny McPeek's Render Judgement, to move up into Churchill's spanking big 20-horse gate.
As we know, this pulled the Derby hopeful just below Render Judgement in the points ranking, the superbly talented Santa Anita Derby place runner, Baeza, into the Derby's official waiting room, as the alternate entry. If among the twenty now in the gate there is yet another scratch later this week, very much including on Derby day, Churchill would assign Baeza a post position. Until that happens, Baeza languishes outside the race.
When Render Judgement was called into the race on April 29, the print press as well as influential online discussions in the larger pre-Derby stream were struck by the many deep ironies of the modestly talented Render Judgement being bestowed a stall in the Derby gate before, and perhaps to the exclusion of the superior Baeza. Baeza's second-class-citizen status so disproportionate to his talent runs directly counter to the core raison d'etre of the Derby's points system, which was instituted twelve years ago to concentrate and intensify the talent selected for the Derby gate. That hit the analysts hard, and they have been vocal about it.
What we can call Baeza's special Derby Purgatory precisely illuminates the specific irritant. What caused Baeza's relegation to 'alternate' status is a punitive tweak that Churchill Downs instituted in the point system just in time for the 2025 Kentucky Derby prep races. It was a well-advertised tweak, which is to say, owners, trainers, track boards of directors and stewards across the country were made well aware of it going into the early preps last year.
The rule tweak went like this: If a prep race attracted a field of at least six runners (and up), all was good, there was no change, full points would be awarded. But if a prep race attracted five runners, just 75% of the (formerly assigned) points would be awarded. If a prep race attracted less than five runners, just 50% of the points would be awarded.
In practice, this affects the early, low-point-award prep races less, there being by definition less difference between 10 points for a show placing and 7.5 points for that same placing with a field of five. But the rule change targeted the big, decisive 'win-and-you're-in' hundred-point races in March and April with much bigger point reductions. The math of the slices in the percentage of awarded points is quite merciless: Should it draw a field of less than five, there's a big difference between a full 50-point second place in the Wood Memorial and a 25-point place showing. Creating that sort of gap in the point awards of the big races is intent behind the change.
With its field of five this year, runners in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby, ordinarily a top 100-point-to-win prep, were hit with the mandated 25% reduction in points awarded. Baeza came into the race without any earlier, less-point-rich preps to his credit, which would have earned him crucial, buffering sums. Coming on strong in the Santa Anita, he placed behind Journalism, which earned him just the curious 75% fraction of 37.5 Derby points for his place effort rather than the full 50 points.
The horse and his connections have rued those 12.5 'missing' points sorely, especially this week as their colt had to travel to and train at Churchill. Had he earned the full 50 for Santa Anita, he'd have been invited into the original Churchill draw and would have a stall in the Derby gate now.
Baeza has been booked into Barn 41 on the Churchill backstretch as he trains to stay sharp while awaiting his fate. Fortunately for him, Baeza can't be informed of his predicament — he just knows that he's not in California and that it's a new track and a new barn. But his trainer John Shirreffs had this to say to the press about his athlete's week in what we can call a special Derby Purgatory: 'It's very awkward. It's tough to come over here and not know you're going to run. And then to wait to see if somebody has to scratch, and that's not something you hope for. You want everybody to enjoy their Derby experience. So, it's very awkward, but because he (Baeza) has that opportunity, it would be a shame (if there were a scratch) and he wasn't here to run.'
BALTIMORE - MAY 20: John Shirreffs, trainer of Giacomo, holds a conversation as he sits on a stack of hay bales while staying dry in a stall of the Stakes Barn on a cold rainy morning on the eve of the 130th Preakness Stakes on May 20, 2005 at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by)
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At the forefront of the racing analysts responding flat-out negatively to this development are: Andrew Beyer, the ingenious inventor of the industry-standard Beyer Speed figures; Steven Crist, the nationally-recognized racing author and celebrated former publisher of the Daily Racing Form, as well as current Daily Racing Form analyst Brad Free. The Los Angeles Times' well-regarded racing authority John Cherwa responded to the situation with a rigorously even-handed account but one that was also appreciative of the many ironies at work around the talented colt.
In tandem, it was Crist and Beyer, two undisputed titans of American Thoroughbred flat racing and the finest handicapping thereof, who unequivocally came down hardest on the prep races' rule change by Churchill Downs. The occasion was the Daily Racing Form's annual stream of Crist's, Beyer's, and Brad Free's picks for the Derby, hosted by Free. Free guides the breezy, no-holds-barred discussion with a sure hand through an analysis of all athletes in the gate, but at the top of the program the trio address the anomalous Baeza situation.