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 Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
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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, 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 far superior Baeza. Baeza’s second-class-citizen status, glaringly disproportionate to his athletic gifts, 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 Kentucky Derby gate. That hit the analysts hard, and they have been vocal about it. The idea is not to fill the Kentucky Derby gate with also-rans. The nominal goal is to fill that gate with stellar athletes.
What we can call Baeza’s special Derby Purgatory precisely illuminates the specific irritant that caused his relegation to “alternate” status. Just in time for the 2025 prep races, Churchill Downs instituted a punitive tweak to the point system. 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 runs thusly: If a prep race attracts a field of at least six runners (and up), all is good, full points are awarded. But if a prep race attracts five runners, just 75% of the (formerly assigned) points will be awarded. If a prep race attracts less than five runners, 50% of the points are awarded.
In practice this year, the rule affected the early, low-point-award prep races less, there being by definition less numerical difference between 10 points for a place showing and 7.5 points for that same place in a field of five runners. But the rule more successfully targeted the five big, decisive “win-and-you’re-in” hundred-point races in March and April with bigger reductions. The math of those slices is merciless: Should a big prep draw a field of less than five, a 50-point second place is reduced to a 25-point place showing, which can mean the difference between getting a stall in the Churchill gate, or not getting that stall. That sort of gap in the big preps’ point awards seemed to have been the intent behind the change. In turn, that meant that the horses who succeeded in getting into those big, late-season preps, which is to say, those horses with better chances to enter the Kentucky Derby, would, also carry a higher communal risk of being shut out of the Derby should they find themselves in a prep not assessed as “worthy” of full points by Churchill.
Arguably the larger problem is that a point reduction for the size of a field grossly misplaces responsibility. It isn’t, for instance, the responsibility of any trainer that a horse he’s running against gets scratched, thus reducing a field to five or less. Scratches happen. Thoroughbred athletes are pointed at races, enter them, then swerve off if they’re not properly ready, or are made to swerve off by veterinarians if they’re not healthy. It’s what the process of building a horse race is. To collectively punish trainers, their athletes and/or other tracks for the process of trying to put a horse race together misplaces responsibility.
What follows may or may not have been the intent behind Churchill’s rule change, but in the running of the 2025 preps, it certainly was the lone major effect: Of the five biggest Grade 1 Derby prep races, with ordinary point awards for the top five placers on the highest 100-50-25-15-10 scale, the only race hit with a point reduction was the Santa Anita Derby, in which Journalism and Baeza ran first and second, respectively. Historically, it’s well known that Santa Anita draws smaller fields than the big preps in Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky and New York for the simple reason that far less of the racing industry is seated in the western United States. The Thoroughbred racing industry is seated in Kentucky, the Deep South, and New York. Thus, Santa Anita is the major American prep most vulnerable to Churchill’s point reduction rule, and that is exactly how the Derby point-cookie crumbled under the new rule in 2025.
To their credit, in announcing the 2025 point reductions for Santa Anita, Churchill was at pains to point out the high quality of the field.
Baeza came into that race without any earlier, less-point-rich preps to his credit, which would have earned him crucial, buffering sums. Said another way, because of the way he developed, his connections had pointed him to the Santa Anita in the hope of him at least second, which he did, earning just the curious 75% fraction of 37.5 Derby points for his place effort rather than the full 50 points.
Baeza’s connections have sorely rued those 12.5 “missing” points, especially this week as they have had to bring their colt to Churchill to train and to wait. 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.
For the moment, Baeza has booked into Barn 41 on the Churchill backstretch as he trains to stay sharp while awaiting his fate. Fortunately for him, the horse 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 his 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 Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
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At the forefront of 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 former publisher of the Daily Racing Form, as well as current Daily Racing Form analyst Brad Free. The Los Angeles Times’ 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 a fine analysis of all athletes in the gate, but at the top of the program the trio address the anomalous Baeza situation.
In fairness, they point out that there is some hope for Baeza to gain a stall in the gate. Of the last six Kentucky Derbies, all have had race-week scratches and had horses move up into the race. But all three of the Daily Racing Form’s august gentlemen openly ridicule the field-size point reduction rule. And here’s the piquant spoiler: To a man, the three list Baeza high in their picks. DRF writer Free selected Baeza as his top pick to win the Kentucky Derby. Without the colt actually being in the race. It’s a first in more ways than one.
