Mets Will Be 'Best In Baseball' In 2016, NJ Math Professor Predicts

Newark, NJ – Will the New York Mets win 98 games in 2016?

If they do, just remember that New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) professor Bruce Bukiet told you so.

On Thursday, Bukiet - a mathematical sciences professor and associate dean at NJIT in Newark – released his predictions for the 2016 Major League Baseball season.

According to a university news release, this is the 19th year that Bukiet has applied mathematical analysis to compute the number of regular season games each Major League Baseball team should win.

Last year, Bukiet – a die-hard Amazins’ fan - successfully predicted that the Mets would make it to the playoffs, a welcome statistical aberration since his favorite team usually leaves him “plenty of time to do math over the summer.”

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THE PREDICITONS

Bukiet’s numbers indicate that the New York Mets will win 98 games, the most in baseball.

According to Bukiet, the Mets will followed by the Los Angeles Dodgers (97 wins) and the Toronto Blue Jays (97 wins), who should all repeat as champions in their respective divisions in the National League East, West and the American League East.

Bukiet predicts that the Houston Astros will win a division title for the first time since 2001, when they were in the National League by winning 90 games to top the AL West.

If Bukiet’s prediction comes true, the Cleveland Indians (92 wins) should take the American League (AL) Central title for the first time since 2007 and the Chicago Cubs (97 wins) will win the NL Central division for the first time since 2008.

In the National League, the San Francisco Giants (96 wins) and the Washington Nationals (94 wins) are predicted make it to the postseason as the wild card teams, while the St. Louis Cardinals (93 wins) are predicted to miss by a single game.

The rest of the NL teams should finish well behind with no other team winning more than 84 games, Bukiet forecasts.

In the American League, the battle for the wild card spots will be among five teams expected to have mediocre seasons, according to Bukiet.

He’s predicting that the Boston Red Sox will win 84 games, while the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays will win 83 and the Oakland A’s and Seattle Mariners will win 82.

“Surprisingly the World Series Champion Kansas City Royals should fall to fourth place in the AL Central, winning only 75 games,” Bukiet said. “However, the model also picked them to finish in fourth place last year, so maybe there’s something special and different about the Royals.”

At the other end of the spectrum, the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves are predicted to tie for the worst record in baseball with 63 wins each, Bukiet said.

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Photo: Flickr Commons

Charts courtesy of NJIT