Runs Scored in World Baseball Classic

In the Spring 2026 edition of the Metaculus Cup one question concerned the number of runs in the knockout stage of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2026.

The community predicted a mean of just under 70 runs, with a spread of 60–80. My prediction was 60 runs, with a spread of 42–80. The actual number ended up being 59 runs – nearly exactly what I predicted. Let’s see how that was done.

First, there’s a sloppy way of making a quick guess. It’s not very interesting, but it’s a good baseline. Once we have that, we’ll dig into modeling counts on a more granular level, and that’s when it gets interesting. Those techniques can be used for all sorts of counts, not just sports prediction!

I don’t know anything about baseball. I don’t even know what a run is, so I had my research assistant count how many runs were in a few of the previous WBCs.