Baffert to work on 'game plan' after big Saturday performances

Bob Baffert has more viable Kentucky Derby prospects than Fox News has blonde anchors. The list just keeps on growing.

At Oaklawn Park Saturday, Concert Tour stamped himself a major contender with a dominant front-running victory in the Rebel Stakes (giving Baffert his eighth win in the race), while on his home turf of Santa Anita, a half-brother to Baffert’s 2015 Triple Crown champion American Pharoah, Triple Tap, won his debut race at seven furlongs by 4 1/4 lengths.

They now join Baffert’s undefeated Kentucky Derby favorite Life Is Good and Medina Spirit and Spielberg in pursuit of the two-time Triple Crown-winning trainer’s seventh Kentucky Derby, which would give him the most ever, breaking a tie with the late H.A. (Jimmy) Jones of Calumet Farm fame.

“He won nice,” Baffert said of Triple Tap after the race. “It looks like he can go two turns easily; I liked what I saw. We don’t want to rush him.”

Ditto for Concert Tour and Rebel runner-up Hozier.

“It was very impressive,” Baffert said Sunday morning of Concert Tour’s 4 1/4-length victory over late-running stablemate Hozier, who finished second in the 1 1/16-mile Rebel. “They came out of it really well and passed the two-turn test with flying colors.

“We’ll get them back here and figure out a game plan.”