The Handicapper's Notebook Trainer Stats will provide you with a meaningful look at individual trainers strengths and weaknesses. They are accessed from several places in the program. We will show you a few.

One way is to press Ctrl-T from any "main page" (Note: a "main page" is any page where the hot keys are visable).

Another way is from HORSES, Jockey/Trainer, then ...

...Ctrl-T to pop up the trainer stats for this particular trainer. We shall use the first method, which takes us to the master TRAINER page...

Pressing a {C} will take us to a list of trainers sorted by circuit, while a {T} will take us to the entire list...

The list is in alphabetical order. The ".Total" entries are totals for the individual circuits. The total number of trainer entries in the system are shown in the upper right corner.By the way, each trainer is rated based a circuit-specific basis. Thus, a trainer like D. Wayne Lukas will have more than one entry. Let's search for Mike Mitchell, the top trainer in Southern California over the past 5 years.

We type "mit" in the locator box (upper left corner) and the list automatically jumps to the first "Mit" entry. We cursor down to Mitchell, Mike and press {Enter} to view his stats.

This brings us to the Table of Contents. Simply pressing any of the page numbers (1-9) will cause us to turn directly to that page. Notice that the Top Jockey Combination pages are letters rather than numbers. The PageDn and PageUp keys also work. Let's just take a tour of the pages. We start with PageDn to turn to the page 2...

Across the top, we have starts, 1sts, 2nds, 3rds, win percentage, and $net. Recall that $net is the average return for a $2.00 wager. Thus, the average Mitchell horse has a $1.72 $net, which translates into a minus 14 percent (-14%) return on investment (R.O.I.).

The "rtg" column is our way of rating trainers. It is based upon a weighting of wins-places-shows. Mitchell's overall rating is 28. This is good, but not great.

Look at the other circuits at which he has starts. Notice that he has shipped only 7 horses to Northern Cal, but when he does, he means business. By the way, when a trainer has a small number of starts we take his score and adjust it twoards his average score. Mitchell's score in Northern Cal should be in the 60s, but the normalization process smooths that out. That also explains why he has a score of 15 in Louisiana even though he was 1-0-0-0.

Race Type: We can see from the bottom of the page that his best race types are claiming and allowance. He has flopped nicely in graded stakes and is not as strong in maiden special weights as he is at maiden claimers. This clearly fits Mitchell's known persona as a public, claiming stable. On to page 3...

Distance: Mitchell has excelled for years in marathons (1¼ miles and longer). Notice the high $net. I compared Mitchell's current stats with stats run last September. By subtracting those stats from these stats, we can compute what he did in the interim. In the marathon category, he was 14-3-3-2, and the $net was $3.18. Very profitable considering there was no other handicapping. By the way, a "dash" is a race shorter than 5½ frulongs.

Surface: He does slightly better on turf, with a profitable $net. Test period on turf: 44-12-5-7 $2.41.

Age & Sex: Nothing exciting here. Some trainers will excell in certain age and sex groups, but MItchell is not one of those. Page 3...

"Days Since Last Race" needs to be broken down by distance, as shown in the screen above. Notice how different Mitchell's tendencies appear from sprints (shorter than a mile) and routes.

Sprints: He prefers to bring horses back quickly, or fool you with a layoff, although all of his sprinters are acceptable except those off more than 90 days and foreign horses.

Routes: He still falls down in the long layoff and foreign categories, but notice that he is also less effective in quick turnarounds of 7 days or less.

We originally tracked "Days Since..." for maidens as well and found it to be a misleading waste of time. The problem is that during some periods of the year maiden races (especially maiden claimers) are so full that a trainer may have to enter his horse several times to get him a race. This means he does not have control over when his horse runs and "Days Since..." is definitely a control issue. Instead, we opted to track... Page 5...

..."Days Since Last Race or Work." This factor is exactly what it is all about. If a trainer raced his horse 7 days ago, he cannot be expected to work him the same way as a horse that has been off for a month or more. Be aware that Mitchell is somewhat sneaky. Look at the trend in the ratings for both maidens and non-maidens. The longer since the last work, the better! I guarantee that you will not see this pattern with too many trainers.

Since Mitchell is the top SoCal trainer, let's take a quick look at number 2, Mr. Bob Baffert...

This is more typical. Both non-maidens and maidens share the same trait, although I might guess that the "maidens, 11-15" group might come around a little with a few more in the sample. Back to Mitchell...

First-Time Starters: Mitchell does not ssem to be a big threat in either type, but maiden special weights can usually be safely eliminated. By the way, he was 1-0-0-0 during the test period. Next page...

Furlongs Worked/Raced in last 14 days: In the 14-day category we see the opposite of what we might expect: too much work is bad for a Mitchell steed! (test period: 24-3-4-8 $0.67) As could be expected from our previous page, he does very well without a work or race in the last 14 days.

Furlongs Worked/Raced in last 21 days: The tendencies of Fur14 carry on to the 21-day factor as well. In fact, the "no work" category is even stronger although the sample size is small (test period: 1-0-0-0 $0.00).

Times On Track Last 30 Days: This factor is exteremely potent for some trainers, though usually not in the same way as Mitchell. The strongest Mitchell horse is a horse with exactly 1 work or race (test period: 3-1-0-0 $1.42). Interestingly, Mitchell once again does not do well with the "over worked" horse. That is, the horse with 5 or more works+races in the last 30 days is a disappointment (test period: 30-2-1-6 $0.39). Page 7...

Finish in Last: The message is clear that Mitchell's horses do not flop badly and then win races in their next start. (test period: non-maiden 29-4-3-1 $0.66 maiden 7-0-1-2 $0.00, overall 36-4-4-3 $0.53). Next page...

Jockey Standings: Mitchell uses all ranges of jocekys, with a slight edge towards the top jockeys. This would be expected for a top trainer.

Previous Turf Starts: His performance with first-timers on the turf is exceptional, but as the 18 starts in 4½ years indicates, he doesn't get very many of those (test period: 2-2-0-0 $7.37).

Races since claim: As would be expected of a top claiming trainer, Mitchell does slightly better with horses new to his care, but not enough to get excited about. Next page...

Non-Maiden Condition: Our ABCD system is more of a generalization of form. It is by no means definitive. Mitchell's ratings flow nicely from A-B down to D. But notice the $net column. In our system, a "C" is a horse that is of "questionable" form. Mitchell's reputation as a deceptive trainer would certainly fit in here.

Non-Maiden APV: The average purse value percentage addresses class changes very well. Mitchell's strongest categories are from one level up to one level down. When he is rising too much his rating drops.

Non-Maiden FT02: This represents how the horse does with respect to final time, best of last 2 races. Horses in the 1-3 group, therefore, rank in the top three in their field. Notice that when a Mitchell starter is not in the top 6 he can be seriously downgraded. While this may seem obivous, it is not as strong as with some other trainers. Let us return to Bob Baffert as an example...

Not only is Baffert's score worse (11 versus 17 for MItchell), but look at the $net. Betting a Baffert horse that does not rank in the top 6 in its field for final time, best of last 2, has (historically) cost 50% of each wagered dollar! Back to Mitchell...

Public Choice: We have left the ratings off here because they are always in direct proportion to public choice. The column to note here is $net. History would indicate that Mitchell is a betting trainer. Horses not well bet enough to get into the top 5 public choices, perform poorly. Consier Ron McAnally...

...who wins often enough with those long priced horses to make them his best category. Back to Mitchell and let's turn the page...

...to Jockey-Trainer Combinations. We feel that the best way to approach JTCs is to build positive and negative jockey lists. The positive list should be comprised of the following:

• The single jockey that gets the most wins for the trainer
• All jockeys that performa at a level 20% greater than the trainer's overal rating
• All jockeys that have managed to show a flat bet profit

On the overall list above, we have marked these jockeys. Note that to be a "positive jockey" the jockey needs to be marked in any of the categories.(Be aware that these starts are from all circuits and not just Southern California.) Mitchell, as you can see, has used a wide variety of jockeys successfully. This is not normal. By the way, don't get too excited about the guys that are marked based upon just a handful of races.

Next, we build the negative list...

We build the negative list from jockeys that have achieved:

• a rating below 80% of the trainer's overall rating. Thus, in Mitchell's case, we are marking horses at 22 and below .
• a $net below $1.35

In order for the jockey to be on the negative list, he needs to qualify on both counts. Thus, out of the list above we have only 4 negative jockeys. As mentioned earlier, this is not normal as evidenced by...

...Bob Baffert. Notice that he really uses 5 main jocks. The bottom 4 hardly count, with a combined total of 43 starts. Why do we mark them? Because we want to be aware when a start with one of these comes up.

Let's go back to our contents page with {home}...

Notice that there are several Jockey Combination pages. We were looking at the Overall page (A). Let's turn to page B and check out who Mitchell uses in sprint races...

In sprints, Nakatani, Solis and Desormeaux are obvious, with Pincay and Valdivia as honorable mentions. We press PageDn to move to...

...routes and get a very different picture. Now it's Desormeaux, DeLaHoussaye and Valenzuela. In my mind, this is the way to use jockey-trainer combos. Let's continue on with...

...Public Choices 1 and 2. This is the most important jockey-trainer screen. Put yourself into the mind of the trainer: "I have given Fernando Valenzuela 12 shots with good horses and he continually comes up short. Why would I trust him with a live price horse?" Of course, one could argue that the 12 low-priced horses he gave Valenzuela were destined to come up short all by themselves. The next screen...

... shows the combinations with 3rd-6th public choices. Solis, Desormeaux and Valdivia are again, positives, while Stevens continues to be a negative. Looking at extreme long shots...

... doesn't tell us much because Mitchell doesn't get many extreme long shot plays. Next, we move to...

... dirt and then...

... turf. Notice that the turf scores are more exagerated than the dirt scores. Don't get terribly excited about that. It is simply because of smaller sample sizes. When Desormeaux gets up to 40 or 50 starts that $3.39 net will probably come into line a little more. Nevertheless, it does show that he same old jockeys are performing well across the full spectrum of races. This is not always the case. In fact, Northern California's top 15 or so trainers all seem to have unique combinational traits from sprint to route and dirt to turf. Much more so than we've seen it Mitchell's stats. Next we turn to...

... 2-year olds. This screen shows that:

• Mitchell gets very few 2-year olds starts
• When he puts a top jock on board (except Stevens) he means business.

That second one is very important. So important that one could justify betting all 2-year olds ridden by any of those top 7 riders (except, of course, Stevens). By the way, since last September he has had only three 2-year old starts, all with Nakatani (3-1-0-2 $2.73). The next page...

... is 3-year olds and we see more of the same. Same top jockeys, very little specialization. Solis and Desormeaux, Solis and Desormeaux. But notice who's conspicuous by his absence? Pincay! ...

$-year olds show us a couple of interesting things. Sorenson, who's reputation is less than that of a world beater, has an unbelievable 3 wins and a place out of 6 starts! The top trainers usually match up with the top jockeys. That's to be expected. But when you find a top trainer that scores consistently in a specific situation with a lesser jock, that is important news.

The last page of the jockey-trainer stats shows all the jockeys that Mitchell has used in alphabetical order.

This concludes the trainer stats tour. Questions? Send 'em along.