Ghostzapper

Sometimes my impressions of stallions are so strong that I feel like I have a handle on them and don't need to examine their numbers. My working idea of Ghostzapper as the epitome of the awful sire, as the ultimate disappointment, has run into a number of counterexamples on the track lately. Each time I encountered one of these, I found myself saying, "I guess this one is an exception, at least to a degree." I'd thought that enough times that it was time to examine the whole belief.

You probably know what can be said against Ghostzapper. He has 7.4% stakes winners from starters. Even for a stallion who received exquisite mares, this isn't historically bad, certainly not for the low rates we see in this era, and not for a third-crop stallion. But we'd be quibbling over the adverb; 7.4% is weak.

Stately Victor won the grade I Blue Grass, but hasn't shown himself of that caliber generally, certainly not outside of synthetic races. Ghostzapper's only other graded winner is recent Kentucky Cup Sprint winner Matthewsburg (Judy the Beauty did come close in the grade I Spinaway). So not only is Ghostzapper's percentage of stakes winners low, but he hasn't been awash in those really good horses that should come with the commensurate mares.

Now for the surprising virtues that I found. First, Ghostzapper's earnings this year place him #37 on the Blood-Horse's list, behind only Kitten's Joy among third-crop sires. There's a positive flip side to not having a big horse. No Ghostzapper has earned more than $195,897 this year, so Ghostzapper's ranking isn't driven by outliers. It's also important to emphasize how much of a disadvantage being just a third-crop sire is on the general earnings list. Of the top 150 sires by earnings, Ghostzapper ranks in a tie for 96th by number of starters. If earnings were just a redux of starters, we would expect Ghostzapper to rank 96th, but he ranks a lot higher than that. And #37 overall is nothing to dismiss, if the stallion can do it year after year. I would guess that ranking 37th annually might place a stallion somewhere from 15th to 25th cumulatively over a period of five years. Note there are very good stallions way behind #37 this year: Pulpit is 59th, with 32% more starters than Ghostzapper has; A.P. Indy is 75th, with just five fewer starters than Ghostzapper; Smoke Glacken is 93rd, with more starters than Ghostzapper.

For my favorite wins/starts, Ghostzapper over his career is exceptionally high at 21.3%. I didn't check every other stallion in the course of this research, but I didn't run across any better marks. I can tell you that in the top 150 sires by earnings, no stallion has a higher percentage of winners from 2011 starters than Ghostzapper's two-thirds. Behind him are Smarty Jones (62.1%), Saint Liam (61.8%), Flatter (61.3%), Peace Rules (61.1%), and Graeme Hall (60.2%). I have never been a big fan of winners from starters because to me merely winning at some point for some level is not much of an achievement. The rates are very high, meaning that the statistic tells you more about the proportion of really bad horses than really good horses. But to be #1 on any statistic -- would you have thought that of Ghostzapper? Smarty Jones ranking #2 throws the whole statistic into question, but really as a whole, the other five stallions as a whole are good sires, certainly of a type (which could be said to be a type beneath the most protected and pampered horses in the sport). Note, too, that Ghostzapper might well be #1 in another statistic, wins/starts, which does not have the indefinite period of time issue that winners from starters has. (Yearly winners/starters, actually, has some pluses and minuses as a good stat compared to plain winners/starters. The plus is that there is a time limit, as horses can only run so many times in a year. From that standpoint, it makes some sense that a high wins/starts goes with a high percentage of winners from starters in a year. The negative for winners/starters over just a one-year period is that soundness comes into the equation less, which is one thing some people really like about basic winners/starters).

To further the picture of an otherwise good stallion who is only bit by the lack of big horses, Ghostzapper's median earnings per starter of $33,846 is excellent. I don't have a ranking for you there, but it's better than many, many well-regarded stallions, often by a large margin, and worse than very few stallions. Ghostzapper's $53,566 average earnings per starter is more open to interpretation: it's not embarrassingly bad for a stallion with a $20,000 stud fee, but it's certainly not good. Certainly not for a stallion who received the opportunity that Ghostzapper did, a fact we should never lose sight of.

I was intrigued by the combination, the very high median earnings per starter, and the average-ish average earnings per starter. Is it the most extreme ratio of its type? Using the Blood-Horse advertised stallions in the top 150 by earnings, which I would guess would include a good 115, it's the third most extreme, behind Dance With Ravens (1.37 average earnings to median earnings ratio) and Closing Argument (1.57). (Ghostzapper's ratio is 1.58.) An advertised "big-horse stallion" like Tiznow has a ratio over 4 (80k average, 20k median).

I don't really see the ratio as ideally being on one end or the other. The ideal is high in both. A.P. Indy, with a 135k average and a 47k median, is a good model. Any ratio under 2 is low, and there are fine if not elite stallions who fit that (Harlan's Holiday, 1.89; Broken Vow, 1.92; Wildcat Heir, 1.77; Successful Appeal, 1.99; Not For Love, 1.85; Yonaguska, 1.85; Petionville, 1.98).

Ghostzapper's opportunity will be vastly reduced in the future, and that may be the dominant fact about his situation. But it seems to me the fundamental question is if he is simply siring cheap horses who aren't as cheap as some other stallions' horses, or if he is is siring horses with ability who haven't quite broken through and inevitably will. Coupling statistics and observation, I think it's the latter. The wins/starts, for one thing, would not be what it is if his horses were mediocre. Enough is also thought of the Ghostzappers that they would probably not be subjected to heavy campaigns in low-class races to prop up the median earnings. Acting as an advisor to my mother this summer, I crossed Ghostzappers off our yearling list. I'm convinced enough by my analysis that I wouldn't do that again.