Boston Red Sox Baseball Team Now Mirrors MIT Professor’s Prediction

Before this year’s baseball season began, Dimitris Bertsimas, an MIT Sloan School of Management professor who teaches a course called “The Analytical Edge,” predicted the Boston Red Sox baseball team would win 101 games in the regular 162-game baseball season.

As Bertsimas explained in May at a colloquium at the MIT Sloan School,  his statistical model predicted last year that the Boston Red Sox baseball team would win 90 games in the regular season — and they in fact won 89 that year. But this year, Bertsimas’ prediction at first looked overly optimistic, as the Red Sox got off to a slow start — and won only half their games in the first quarter of the baseball season.

MIT Sloan Professor Dimitris Bertsimas

“They are behind [the predicted record], I admit,” Bertsimas said back in May. “But I am hopeful.”

Bertsimas’ hopefulness in May now looks to have been justified: After beating the Seattle Mariners 12-8 on Sunday July 24, the Boston Red Sox had a record of .626 — quite in line with the .623 record Bertsimas predicted for the team for their entire regular season this year.

Will the Red Sox prove Bertsimas’ prediction right throughout the rest of the baseball season? Boston Red Sox fans can only hope so…