Yankees-Red Sox: Boston Rough Start Good News for Wall Street?

Photo: Hemera

Red Sox Nation came into the 2011 season confident they had a winner. Adding the bats of Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez made Boston the off-season champs in the minds of much of the baseball literati.  An 0-5 start has taken the wind out of those sails, especially as Crawford has struggled at the plate.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are in third place, the Blue Jays in second and the … Orioles are 4-1 and atop the AL East?! There’s always fun to be had comparing baseball results to market returns, especially beginning two years ago, when a study by Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ found that, from an economic standpoint, we should all be Yankees fans: the year after they win the World Series, the S&P averages double-digit gains. Not bad, considering the Yankees have 27 titles.
The Red Sox, however, have a much worse market record. The last time Boston won the World Series in 2007, the S&P crashed 37 percent, as reporter Joe Flood reminds us. Of course, they won it in 2004 as well. The S&P returned a healthy 7 percent in 2005. As for the Orioles? Not that it’s gonna happen (sorry Baltimore). But the last time they won the World Series in 1983, the S&P was essentially flat.