History suggests that Red Sox only have a 5.3% chance to make MLB playoffs

History suggests that Red Sox only have a 5.3% chance to make MLB playoffs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Entering the season, many thought that the Boston Red Sox had an opportunity to not only be the best team in the American League East, but probably the American League. From top to bottom, the Red Sox have a lot of talent, but they just haven't put it all together.

This has been a common theme for this organization over the past two years now, and it's very concerning that it keeps happening.

The Red Sox were able to get past some of their early-season struggles a year ago and make the postseason via the wild card, but fell to the New York Yankees in the wild-card round.

Fast forward to 2026, and it doesn't seem like the Red Sox are going to do similar things throughout this campaign.

If history says anything, the Red Sox don't exactly have it on their side. It's an unfortunate reality of what's been a horrible start for this organization and Alex Cora.

“A bad start isn’t the template for a playoff aspirant. In the World Series era (starting in 1903), the Red Sox are the 264th team to lose at least seven of their first nine games. Of the first 263, just 14 (5.3 percent) reached the postseason. No team since the 1991 Twins overcame such poor play through nine games to win a title,” Alex Speier wrote.

I always try not to look at stats like this early on in a year, because it really is that early.

However, every game in Major League Baseball matters, and that's the unfortunate reality of playing 162 games. It might not feel like these games in the beginning of April matter a whole lot, and one big stretch could overcome this, but it's just a reality that one singular game that the Red Sox lost in April could be the reason why they missed the playoffs or not.

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