In Sunday's 6th at Santa Anita, a 6f maiden special weight for 4+up, Southern Sunrise went off the 3/5 favorite on the strength of an 88-Beyer, 2 by 1 1/2 debut four-and-a-half weeks previously. That sounds reasonable, right?
Not when the horse in question must beat not one, but two Bob Baffert trainees. While the Form lists 88 as the par for the condition, do you really think that is going to do it in the current Santa Anita Bob Baffert environment?
It didn't; Roman Threat, one of the Bafferts, ran 6f in 1:08.02, which I got a 109 Beyer-style number for. Making conservative assumptions, the race deserves to be 100+, if not quite that high. To Southern Sunrise's credit, he did run 2nd, only 1 1/4 behind Roman Threat, and 6 1/4 clear of the other Baffert trainee.
It would be reasonable to think that Southern Sunrise was not regarded as just your ordinary "2nd in debut" type with the money that he took -- that the fans recognized the Baffert factor, but thought that Southern Sunrise's special ability offset it. The hole in that theory is that Southern Sunrise was 6-1 in his debut. So if there was legitimate buzz around him, it didn't really take hold until Sunday's race.
What seems out of whack is that the two Baffert trainees were 3.10-1 and 6.10-1, respectively (Roman Threat, a first-time starter half to Indian Blessing, was actually the higher price). If you add the odds implied by those two prices, ignoring take-out, they only sum to a 38.5% probability of winning. If you do the same for Southern Sunrise's 3/5 odds, it's a 62.5% probability of winning. That ratio, my friends, is out of whack. Given precedent, Baffert cannot be on the short stick, without extremely good reason....
As an addendum, I cited Devil's Bag before as a broodmare sire who isn't particularly good. It's his daughter, Clochard, who's the dam of Southern Sunrise.
The 2nd dam on Southern Sunrise is Danseuse, who won her debut in 1:22 flat at Belmont, with Capote Belle 2nd, and the 3rd-place finisher more than 20 lengths back. This was the same day that our colt Teenager broke his maiden in a much slower 1:24 flat. Danseuse would only run once more, winning an allowance by 11.
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