It’s axiomatic that the illustrious New Mexico-born cowboy Bob Baffert has saved his two best Kentucky Derby prospects, Citizen Bull and Barnes, for what can be called his home track of Santa Anita. The Santa Anita Derby is one of the final troika of hundred-point preps on the Road to the Derby, and the West is the West, after all. If you’re a renowned trainer pointing an athlete at the Kentucky Derby, and you’re out in California in the first week of April, why ship east?
But as the dice have fallen, Santa Anita’s ordinarily major Kentucky prep has drawn just five entries this year, and that narrower level of competition means that Churchill Downs will reduce the number of possible Kentucky points earned by the Santa Anita runners to 75% of their former value. The winner will take home 75 points, the place horse will earn 37.5, and so on down the scale. Bluntly put: Slim pickings for those horses now on teetering on the edge of the cut in the point standings.
Which brings us to Baffert’s horse and the third-favorite in the morning line, Barnes, for whom the five-horse Santa Anita field is not, necessarily, good news. But before we get into his chances at the Churchill gate, not to mention his chances in this nevertheless fine race, herewith, the post positions and morning line odds:
(Post Position, Horse, Trainer, Jockey, Morning Line)
- Journalism, Michael McCarthy, Umberto Rispoli, 6-5
- Citizen Bull, Bob Baffert, Martin Garcia, 9-5
- Westwood, John Shirreffs, Tiago Pereira, 20-1
- Barnes, Bob Baffert, Juan Hernandez, 3-1
- Baeza, John Shirreffs, Hector Berrios, 6-1
(Source: Santa Anita, 3/31/2025)
It’s important to note that Baffert has won the Santa Anita Derby nine times. Repeat: nine times. There are many ways to regard that fact, but perhaps the most tactically significant way would be to say: It would be a serious mistake for any opposing trainer or rider to think that the gargantuan number of wins means that Baffert brings horses to this race lightly. He has an enormous California operation and he’s slotting his runners into races all over the country on that delicately calibrated palette of advantages and varied athletes’ forms and abilities that trainers with big barns have at their call. It’s deadly serious playbook work, not unlike that which Philadelphia Eagles’ coach Nick Siriani did in his assessment of his players’ form before the big game in New Orleans against Kansas City last February. Baffert is certainly not shy about “pointing” his athletes wherever he likes — no top trainer is — but he traditionally enters them (into their biggest races) as late as the tracks will allow.
No matter what happens in the remaining brace of hundred-point preps this weekend at Keeneland and Aqueduct, both Citizen Bull and Journalism have insulated themselves with points performances that bode well for a slot in the Churchill gate, should their connections want that. At this writing Citizen Bull sits 9th in the nation on the points leaderboard, and Journalism 14th, with 60 and 47.5 points, respectively. Citizen Bull sits on the points ladder comfortably, period, and if he bumps up by placing well at Santa Anita, so be it. It will take a race happenstance of some magnitude to prevent Journalism, this race’s top favorite, from landing in the money on Saturday, which is to say, he will further insulate himself with some relatively comfortable number of points from the horses who will take the bigger hundred-point preps this weekend.
Barnes is in a more parlous position heading into the Santa Anita, which is a polite way of saying that he needs a whole lot more out of this race than either of his two main competitors. He is, first, far more lightly raced than his stable mate Citizen Bull or Journalism. His big (and only real) 2025 accomplishment is that he ran second to Journalism and actually beat Rodriguez in the first and only stakes run at distance of his short life. This was the March 1 G2 San Felipe Stakes, and yes, it showed his talent, but Barnes remains what he is, namely, talented and deeply, deeply green. Against more experienced horses, and certainly against the two steadier stakes-proven winners he will face on Saturday, he’s likely to be more the student, not so much the teacher.
It works both for and against Barnes that the field is as short as it is. He’s so green that less traffic and less chaos out there in the furious doing of the race will help him. But: As noted above, Santa Anita’s shaved-down Kentucky points heavily reduce Barnes’ shot at a stall in the Churchill gate by requiring him to place high at the wire. One more horse in the race would have put the Santa Anita feature back into full Kentucky points and would have afforded Barnes a less-tight box for his upcoming performance.
Bottom line: Use him in an exotic, box the hell out of him, bet him on the nose to win just for fun, whatever hits your mind right. The delightful thing about racing is that anything can happen, and Barnes may in fact rise out of himself and show the world that he can do it. But the composition of this race and his unforgiving position in it doesn’t really offer him much room to do that.
It’s all or nothing for him now.
Read the full article here
