SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Essential Quality just keeps on winning, displaying a grit that his handlers simply marvel at.
The Belmont Stakes winner added the $1.25 million Travers Stakes to his resume Saturday, holding off Midnight Bourbon in a stirring stretch duel at Saratoga Race Course for his eighth victory in nine career starts for trainer Brad Cox and Godolphin Stable.
“He ran a tremendous race. He was very good today,” Cox said. “He certainly seemed like he had his game face on. He knows how to battle, he really does. He likes to have his head in front. He’s a tremendous horse.”
The 152nd running of the so-called Mid-Summer Derby had a field of seven 3-year-olds, and only Midnight Bourbon, the runner-up in the Preakness, offered a challenge for the reigning 2-year-old champion. The two led the field from the gate, with Midnight Bourbon setting the pace. He was ahead by as much as 3 1/2 lengths down the back stretch before Essential Quality began to close.
Jockey Luis Saez pulled Essential Quality even at the top of the stretch and the two battled side by side to the wire, with Essential Quality winning by a neck over Midnight Bourbon and jockey Ricardo Santana Jr.
“He’s very smart,” said Saez, the leading jockey at Saratoga. “He does his job. He knows how to do it. He always does it.”
The sleek gray son of Tapit covered the 1 1/4 miles in 2 minutes, 1.96 seconds on a track that was labeled as fast despite an intermittent drizzle. He paid $2.90 to win, $2.30 to place, and $2.10 to show. Midnight Bourbon returned $4 and $3.30. Miles D, with jockey Flavien Prat aboard, was third and paid $4.90.
Essential Quality has never had a bad race. His wide trip in the Kentucky Derby in May – he finished fourth – is the only blemish on that sterling record. Just like Saturday, Essential Quality displayed grit in winning the Jim Dandy four weeks ago, storming from behind at the top of the stretch in the five-horse field and holding off Keepmeinmind by a neck in the traditional prep race at Saratoga for the Travers.
“To have a horse in contention for the Derby, it didn’t go out the way we hoped. That’s horse racing. You move on,” said Jimmy Bell, racing manager at Godolphin Stable. “There was really no redemption. Every race he’s always closing. Even though it might be close, it just seems he sort of thrives on that down the lane, more so than we do. He has that innate ability to always finish. He’s always coming. He’s just a joy.”
Cox won one of the most prestigious races for older horses at the Saratoga meeting when Knicks Go won the Grade 1 Whitney earlier this month. He became just the third trainer – and the first since John M. Gaver Sr. in 1942 – to win the Travers and Whitney in the same year with different horses. Gaver won the 1942 Travers with Shut Out and the Whitney with Swing and Sway. James G. Rowe, Jr. was the first, winning the Travers with Twenty Grand and the Whitney with St. Brideaux in 1931.
Essential Quality is the first horse to complete the Jim Dandy-Travers sweep in nearly a decade, since Alpha dead-heated with Golden Ticket in 2012. He’s also the 29th horse to pull off the Belmont-Travers double, the 10th Juvenile champion to win the Travers, and first since Street Sense in 2007.
Nine of the past 13 Travers winners, including the last six in a row, entered the Travers coming off a victory.
The Travers was sixth and final Grade I stakes race Saturday. The others: in the 43rd running of the $500,000 Ballerina for fillies and mares 3 years old and up, heavily favored Gamine, trained by Bob Baffert, won for the ninth time in 10 starts, leading wire-to-wire and easily holding off Lake Avenue by 1 3/4 lengths in a light, steady drizzle; Yaupon edged Firenze Fire by a head to win the 42nd running of the $600,000 Forego for 4-year-olds and up; Jackie’s Warrior edged Life Is Good by a neck to capture the 37th running $500,000 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial for 3-year-olds; Letruska held off Bonny South, Royal Flag and Dunbar Road in a stretch duel to capture the 74th running of the $600,000 Personal Ensign for fillies and mares 4 years old and up; and Gufo outran Japan by a head to win the 47th running of the $750,000 Sword Dancer, a 1.5-mile race on the turf for 4-year-olds and up.
Allar missed the second half of last week’s win over Wisconsin after suffering a left knee injury, but he was not listed on the injury report for the No. 3 Nittany Lions on Saturday morning.
Penn State coach James Franklin said earlier this week that Allar could be a game-time decision and that backup Beau Pribula would take snaps with Allar in practice.
Allar ranks 10th nationally with a QBR of 83.6. He has completed 71.3% of his passes for 1,640 yards and totaled 15 touchdowns with four interceptions.
Penn State starting defensive lineman Dani Dennis-Sutton will be a game-time decision, a source told ESPN’s Pete Thamel. Dennis-Sutton, who is listed as questionable, is expected to warm up and try to play.
Information from ESPN’s Jake Trotter was used in this report.
WEST POINT, N.Y. — Army star quarterback Bryson Daily will miss Saturday’s game against Air Force with an undisclosed injury/illness, Army officials told ESPN.
Daily leads the country with 19 rushing touchdowns and leads all FBS quarterbacks with 909 rushing yards. He was unable to practice this week. The No. 21 Black Knights had a bye last weekend after beating East Carolina 45-28 on Oct. 19 to win their seventh straight game this season.
In the win over ECU, Daily carried the ball 31 times for a career-high 171 yards and accounted for six touchdowns, five rushing and one passing. The 6-foot, 221-pound senior has already set Army single-season records for touchdowns responsible for (26) and rushing touchdowns (19) in seven games.
With Daily sidelined, junior Dewayne Coleman will fill in at quarterback and make his first career start. Daily, one of four team captains, has been Army’s starting quarterback over the past two seasons and the main cog in a Black Knights offense that has eclipsed 400 yards of total offense in all seven games this season.
Army (7-0, 6-0) travels to North Texas next week for an AAC contest. They get a bye week on Nov. 16 and then face Notre Dame on Nov. 23 at Yankee Stadium.
There’s no timetable at this point on how long Daily might be out of the lineup, but Army officials don’t think it’s a season-ending setback.
Army, off to its best start in nearly 30 years, will be one of the top contenders for the Group of 5’s spot in the College Football Playoff if the Black Knights can win the American Athletic Conference championship.
The 2024 World Series ended with the Los Angeles Dodgers winning the championship in a stunning comeback in Game 5, with Walker Buehler the unlikely pitcher to close out the 7-6 win over the New York Yankees. First baseman Freddie Freeman was handed the World Series MVP award for his record-tying 12-RBI performance.
But that doesn’t tell the full story of everyone who played a starring role in October — a postseason that featured a record six grand slams, among other wildness. So, to honor the best of the entire postseason, we’ve created our first MLB All-October Team.
From wild-card-round sensations to World Series standouts, here are the players our ESPN MLB panel of experts voted as the best of the best at every position along with some award hardware for the brightest stars of October.
Why he’s here: To be honest, it wasn’t a great playoffs for catchers — they hit just .184/.254/.310. Higashioka is the one catcher who did hit, belting three home runs and driving in five runs in the seven games the Padres played.
Honorable mention: Will Smith, Los Angeles Dodgers
1B: Freddie Freeman, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why he’s here: Freeman didn’t have an extra-base hit and drove in just one run in the first two rounds of the playoffs as he tried to play through the severely sprained ankle he suffered at the end of the regular season. He didn’t even play in two games of the NLCS and required hours of physical therapy before each game just to get on the field. But the five days off before the World Series clearly helped, and he homered in the first four games, including his dramatic walk-off grand slam in Game 1 that will go down as not only the signature World Series moment of 2024 — but a World Series moment for the ages.
Why he’s here: Torres had a solid October as he heads into free agency, although he had little competition here. Indeed, second basemen collectively hit just .219 with three home runs the entire playoffs — two of those from Torres — and drove in 24 runs, with Torres driving in eight himself. He had three multihit games and scored five runs in five games in the ALCS, while also taking walks to help set the table for Juan Soto.
Why he’s here: Max Muncy set a record when he reached base 17 times in the NLCS, including a single-postseason-record 12 times in a row, but he went hitless in the World Series. Vientos, meanwhile, had a stellar first trip to the postseason, hitting .327/.362/.636 with five home runs and 14 RBIs in 13 games. That followed a breakout regular season in which he posted an .837 OPS with 27 home runs in just 111 games. He looks like he’ll be a fixture in the middle of the Mets’ lineup for years to come.
Why he’s here: Edman was an under-the-radar pickup at the trade deadline, in part because he was still injured and hadn’t yet played for the St. Louis Cardinals. Most of Edman’s starts came at shortstop, especially after Miguel Rojas was injured in the NLDS, but his bat got him here. Edman was the NLCS MVP after hitting .407 with a record-tying 11 RBIs in the series. He had started at cleanup just twice in his career but was slotted there twice against the Mets, driving in seven runs in those two games. Then he went 2-for-4 in each of the first two games of the World Series, including a home run in Game 2, and finished the Fall Classic hitting .294/.400/.588 with six runs.
Why they’re here: Betts entered this postseason in a 3-for-38 postseason slump going back to the end of the 2021 NLCS — and it initially looked like it would be more of the same when he went 0-for-6 the first two games of the NLDS, including being robbed of a home run courtesy of Jurickson Profar. Everything turned in Game 3 when Profar almost robbed him of another home run — but didn’t. After that, Betts was in the middle of most of the Dodgers’ big rallies, hitting .321/.394/.625 with four home runs and 16 RBIs over the Dodgers’ final 14 playoff games.
Soto’s at-bats spoke for themselves: He never seemed to have a bad one. His big at-bat was the three-run home run in the 10th inning of Game 5 of the ALCS to send the Yankees to the World Series. Getting intentionally walked twice while batting in front of Aaron Judge speaks to Judge’s struggles, yes — but also to how locked in Soto was all postseason. He finished the postseason slashing .327/.469/.633 with 4 home runs, 9 RBIs and 14 walks in 14 games.
Hernandez actually began October on the bench, but we’ve seen him perform big in the postseason before, and he stepped up when Rojas was injured in the NLDS. Hernandez homered in the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory to close out the Padres in the NLDS, had a big two-run home run against the Mets in Game 3 of the NLCS and got the series-turning five-run rally against the Yankees in Game 5 started with a leadoff single in the fifth as well as the series-winning rally in the eighth with another leadoff base hit. Overall, he hit .294/.357/.451 with 11 runs and six RBIs.
Why he’s here: The Yankees were often a two-man show in the postseason, just like they were in the regular season — except it was Soto and Stanton, not Soto and Judge. Stanton blasted seven home runs in the playoffs, including in the final three games of the ALCS (earning MVP honors) and in Games 1 and 5 of the World Series. He finished the playoffs hitting .273/.339/.709, and those seven homers are the most in a single postseason in Yankees history.
Why they’re here: Certainly, it seems as if the status of the starting pitcher in the postseason continues to decline — although, that doesn’t mean they’re not important. There were certainly some stellar individual outings along the way: Corbin Burnes allowed one run in eight innings (but lost 1-0) for the Baltimore Orioles; Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler allowed one hit in seven scoreless innings (but that would be his only start); and the Padres’ Michael King fanned 12 to beat the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS. Skubal had two scoreless starts against the Houston Astros in the wild-card series and Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS, confirming his status as one of the best in the game — or maybe the best, as his soon-to-be AL Cy Young Award will attest.
Cole was really the one consistent starter throughout the postseason, making five starts with a 2.17 ERA. Unfortunately, that ERA doesn’t register the five unearned runs from the final game of the World Series when the Yankees’ defense turned into a comedy of errors — including Cole himself opening up the floodgates by failing to cover first base to get what would have been the inning-ending out.
Why they’re here: It also wasn’t the best of postseasons for closers — not even great ones. The Guardians’ Emmanuel Clase allowed five earned runs all regular season — and then eight in the playoffs. Milwaukee Brewers closer Devin Williams blew that wild-card game against the Mets. All-Star Jeff Hoffman lost two games for the Phillies. Weaver, however, was the one consistent late-game performer and was great while often pitching more than one inning. He posted a 1.76 ERA across 15⅓ innings. Who knows how the World Series ends if Yankees manager Aaron Boone keeps Weaver in the game in the 10th inning of Game 1. (Weaver had thrown just 19 pitches.)
Treinen, meanwhile, capped his comeback season — he had missed almost all of 2022 and then all of 2023 — with a 2.19 ERA across 12⅓ innings, winning two games and saving three others. In the World Series clincher, he recorded seven outs and got out of a two-on, no-out jam in the eighth inning to preserve the Dodgers’ 7-6 lead before handing the ball to Buehler to close out the ninth.