Flares For Older Sires’ Frosh Products

Our two-part series about wagering on 2020 two-year-olds, focused upon the first crop of horses starting a career in breeding. Addressing the entire freshman crop for 2020, however, would not be complete without acknowledging the productivity of last year’s freshman crop from pacing and trotting sires that have accumulated statistics from progeny in the division.

Though there are veterans, the top studs with the best stats for our purposes are those with the strongest average earnings. However, just as we did with first-crop sires, we are interested in the progeny in the top 10 of this category, and then, only those pacing sires with 50 or more starters and trotters with 40 or more starters. These will invariably present frosh colts and fillies the public tends to overlook.

Pacers

In 2019, pacing sires average earnings were led by Captaintreacherous. He led his own sire, Somebeachsomewhere, by $11,639. This season, the ill-fated Somebeachsomewhere sends his last crop of freshman colts and fillies to post. So, the top two pacing sires of 2019 will still be attracting the public with their latest racing kids.

Third on the list is Bettors Delight. He is $7,126 behind “Somebeach.”

Fourth is the stalwart giant of older pacers, Sweet Lou. This guy drew lots of attention at two, but speeding off with record miles did not add up and he came back only mildly successful at three. He blossomed as an elder. For him to be in fourth place with average-earners at two is impressive for bettors and makes his crop available for some good prices early in their season.

Fifth- sixth- and seventh-place sires, American Ideal, Rockin Image and Roll With Joe, are pacers not so enamored by fans, giving their frosh performers an edge for betting. We especially like Roll With Joe, whose freshman colts and fillies we’ve been successful with since he dropped his first crop.


Trotters

Fans and bettors of frosh products pour scads of wagering bucks into any son or daughter of Muscle Hill. Yearling buyers around the world have arm wrestled at auctions to buy one of his yearlings. The New Jersey-bloodline for this trotter is testament to a few generations of consistent champions. His sire is Muscles Yankee and that one’s sire is the fireball Valley Victory, whose huge racing career was halted by injury but not early enough to stop applause. That male line is superb, continuing with Baltic Speed, Speedy Somolli and Speedy Crown.

So good is that line, the progeny fools no bettors. But we look beyond it because, for one, last season Muscle Hill was not the leading average money earner among trotting sires.

Father Patrick, a son of the extremely productive Cantab Hall (whose line also includes Valley Victory and Baltic Speed) did better with freshmen last year than Muscle Hill. This means a slight edge, for sure, for bettors, especially since their main memory of Father Patrick tends to be his mishap at the Hambletonian, when he broke at the start of the final and was eliminated.

See feature blog April 24, a redux of our Father Patrick Hambletonian coverage, circa August 2014.

On the average-earnings list, Father Patrick is $3,000 ahead of Muscle Hill, but the third-place sire, Chapter Seven, is behind him by nearly $10,000. Chapter Seven has become a popular sire for bettors who follow the raw performances of sires as racehorses. Still, his numbers compared to Father Patrick last year in the youngster division, fail to threaten the top one’s position.

From there, the trotting sires group from figures of $18,000 down to $13,000. Included in this group of five are sires that deliver some good prices in the lower ranks, including Kadabra and Royalty For Life.

We will be highlighting these sire properties when racing returns and the two-year-olds hit the tracks. Make notes from this blog and stay with us through all of the remaining 2020 harness season for news, betting advice and more.