Saratoga Field Sizes

[jerry]

Not much to nibble on here. 6 to 8 horse fields max with little value. I suppose it’s Covid related but NYRA’s handle can’t be too good.

[BitPlayer]

This a Twitter post from o_crunk yesterday (Sunday):

\"SAR handled $19.5M yesterday, their lowest Saturday handle since 8/11/2012. Every day this week has been down 20% y/o/y at SAR. DMR handled $21.6M yesterday for their big Pacific Classic card, a marginal increase over the same card last year which handled $20.8M.\"

In fairness, the unexpected storm Saturday decimated field sizes (even some MTO\'s did not start because they had not shipped up from Belmont), and the year-over-year comparison is affected by this having been Travers week last year.  Interesting that, even with the storm, Saratoga handle was only $2 million less than the Pacific Classic card.

Going forward, I wonder, even after the pandemic, how many horsemen will decide not to ship up to Saratoga from Kentucky now that purses there have slots support.

[jm2324]

In my eyes the game has been reduced to 4 Jocks and 5 trainers!The top jocks have won 50% of all the races and have been ITM in 80%, with the average mutual $9.20. Trainers have won 39% of the races. It\'s pretty much their own playground! Maybe players have allocated their funds elsewhere now.

[richiebee]

I guess the pandemic has made me a glass half full guy.

You see a handful of trainers dominating racing at the Spa, which, statistically,
nobody can deny.

What I see is a great three trainer race among three of the better trainers at
NYRA over the last 15 years. I guess this \"race\" is made more interesting in that
many will be pulling against the \"favorite\", Chad Brown.