NEW YORK — Essential Quality was set Tuesday as a 2-1 favorite for the Belmont Stakes, which will be run Saturday without a horse from trainer Bob Baffert pending an investigation into Medina Spirit’s failed drug test after winning the Kentucky Derby.

Preakness winner Rombauer and Essential Quality headline a field of eight horses for the third jewel of the Triple Crown. Baffert has no horses running at Belmont Park because the New York Racing Association suspended him in light of Medina Spirit’s positive drug test for a corticosteroid at the Derby.

Essential Quality, who drew the No. 2 post position, went off as the Derby favorite and finished fourth. Brad Cox’s other Derby horse, Mandaloun, would be named the winner of that race if Medina Spirit is disqualified, but Cox opted to run only Essential Quality in the Belmont.

“He’s a valid favorite for sure,” Hot Rod Charlie’s trainer, Doug O’Neill, said of Essential Quality. “He didn’t have the greatest of trips in the Derby and ran a dynamite fourth. You’ve got to get through him. The win goes through him, for sure.”

Rombauer is the 3-1 second choice.