The Line-up:
1. Jacoby Ellsbury, CF
2. Dustin Pedroia, 2B
3. Carl Crawford, LF
4. Kevin Youkilis, 3B
5. Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
6. David Ortiz, DH
7. Mike Cameron, RF
8. Jarrod Saltalamacchia, C
9. Marco Scutaro, SS
How does this season look? Gooooood:
As the Major League Baseball season hits full swing this weekend, a Massachusetts professor predicts the Boston Red Sox will easily outflank divisional rival the New York Yankees in 2011.
Dimitris Bertsimas of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used quantitative models based on player analytics to predict the Red Sox will win 101 games this season, eight more than the Yankees.
New York won 95 games last season to finish second in the American League East and Boston was third with 89 wins.
"A player is a vector of numbers and from that, we can forecast overall team statistics," said Bertsimas, co-director of MIT's Operations Research Center and admitted Red Sox fan.
In a new paper "The Analytics Edge in Baseball," Bertsimas and doctoral student Allison O'Hair developed three models to determine the outcome of teams' 162-game seasons.
The Tampa Bay Rays, last year's AL East champs, are forecast to have another great year with 100 wins. Divisional also-rans are forecast to be the Baltimore Orioles with 83 wins and the Toronto Blue Jays, with 80.
Now if we can stay injury-free…..