Top 2020 Freshman Sires to Watch

It is tricky business, attempting to predict the leading freshman sires of any year. Surprises always await.

Still, BloodHorse MarketWatch pored over the statistics for this year's sire class looking for clues.

One surety is that opportunity (read number of foals) matters in getting a stallion toward the top of the leading freshman sires list. Among the top 10 freshman sires of 2019, only two had fewer than 100 foals in their first crop. Of those with more than 100, all had more than 110 foals. Only Hill 'n' Dale Farms' Bayern  and Journeyman Stallions' Khozan  had fewer with 96 and 74, respectively.

So when identifying potential leaders, BloodHorse first identified the stallions with key book quality and dam performance metrics and then sorted by number of 2018 Northern Hemisphere foals to see who had the most promising blend.

The performance metrics and the threshold for the top sires to watch are as follows:

• the percentage of first-crop dams that were winners at 2 (top sires had 25% or more of all first-crop dams),
• percentage of 2-year-old winners produce from all runners by the first-crop dams (25% or more), and
• percentage of 2-year-old stakes winners produce from all runners by the first-crop dams (5% or more).

MarketWatch also flagged freshman sires whose first-crop Comparable Index (CI) was 1.50 or higher and their Class Performance Index (CPI) was 2.00 or higher. The CI is an index similar to the Average Earnings Index but looks at how good a book of mares were as producers, while the CPI indicates how good the book of mares were as racehorses. 

A complete chart of all these statistics for stallions with a minimum of 10 foals is available in the MarketWatch section within the March 7 issue of BloodHorse magazine.

After sorting the full list of first-crop sires by number of 2018 foals, we separated out those sires who ranked among the top in two or more of the performance or book quality categories.

The top sires to watch include many familiar names, such as Darley's Nyquist  and Frosted , and Claiborne Farm's Runhappy , who all were represented by a 2019 yearling average of $200,000 or more.

Nyquist and Runhappy had the strongest overall profiles, having ranked among the top sires in all five categories. Nyquist might have a sight edge over Runhappy having been a three-time grade 1 winner and champion at 2. Runhappy definitely had speed as indicated by his 2015 champion sprinter title, but he didn't win at 2 until Dec. 28 of his juvenile year. The son of Super Saver 's first book of dams include 34% who won at 2 (the highest among our 10 sires to watch) and his dams have produced 27% 2-year-old winners to date, which is the co-highest among the top 10 sires along with Taylor Made Stallions' Not This Time .

Expatriate California Chrome 's first book of dams have produced the highest percentage of 2-year-old stakes (10%) among all freshman sires represented by 30 foals or more. These dams also include 32% that were winners themselves at 2.

Using these categories and thresholds, WinStar Farm's Constitution  would have been flagged as a sire to watch. The son of Tapit  surprised more than a few when he ended the year as the second-ranked leading sire, but his first runners possessed the raw material. He would have ranked relatively high by CI (1.66) and CPI (2.55) and had been bred to mares that included 29% that won at 2. His dams would have fallen just outside our thresholds for percentage of 2-year-old winners (22%) and stakes winners (3.9%) produced. 

As stated earlier, surprises await.