It’s been only a couple of seasons since the Red Sox won their last World Series after a spectacular season in 2018. Boston had an amazing team that season and they breezed to championship following a spectacular regular season and wins over the Yankees, the Astros and the Dodgers in the playoffs.
Just three years later, the Red Sox are no longer the side that lifted that trophy and their bleak performances in last year’s prematurely ended season highlighted many of their insufficiencies. With the season now well underway, we take a look at some of the pre-season predictions that the experts made along with a comparison to the actual situation after the first 24 games.
Pre-season Predictions Looking Bleak
A few months ago, as the MLB season was approaching, the industry experts started making their predictions based on the available data. According to research from USSportbonus.com and many other sports betting predictions sites, the Red Sox were certainly not among the favorites for the World Series, and even a spot in the playoffs was a long stretch.
Boston Herald’s Steve Hewitt wrote in his MLB predictions column that the Red Sox would, in his opinion, end the season with a score of 84-78, identical to their 2019 numbers. This would likely not be enough to make the playoffs. Hewitt believed that the team’s strong offence would show some solid performances, but that the team would eventually fade away by September.
Herald’s other pundit Jason Mastrodonato have an even bleaker prediction, expecting the Red Sox to end the season with a 74-88 score, far from a spot in the playoffs. In his opinion, there are simply too many health concerns in the starting lineup and the team would lose too many of their prospects in the later part of the season.
The New York post’s crew of MLB pundits all placed the Red Sox as fourth in this season’s AL East Division and Joel Sherman said that the pitching depth is the greatest problem the team would be faced with, preventing them from having success or making the playoffs.
Were the Experts Right?
It’s still very early in the season and there are many more games to be played, but thus far the pundits’ predictions have been way off. The Red Sox sit in the first position of the AL East Division with 15 wins and an average of 0.625, slightly lower than the one they had at the end of the 2018 season.
Not only have the results been better than expected, but the Red Sox are also looking good on the pitch and have been able to work around some of the health concerns that were expected to be a problem for them in the fresh season.
If they can maintain momentum and keep building their confidence, the Red Sox now have a very realistic chance of making the playoffs and proving their critics wrong. Of course, the season is still young, but the team that won the World Series just three years ago is once again proving that they have what it takes to compete and that no expert prediction can beat the Red Sox spirit.