Last Place to Champions: What Marcel Projection Reveals About 2021 NPB Yakult and Orix

Background Marcel projection predicts next season's performance by taking a weighted average of the past 3 years of individual stats. It's designed to show the continuation of current trends — which means it struggles when teams change dramatically. 2021 was exactly that kind of year. Both pennant winners came from last place the season before: Tokyo Yakult Swallows : Last in 2020 → Central League champions in 2021 Orix Buffaloes : Last in 2020 → Pacific League champions in 2021 Using data from my NPB prediction app , I traced how Marcel handled these two teams — and what it couldn't see. → GitHub : https://github.com/yasumorishima/npb-prediction What Marcel Said Before the Season "Marcel projected wins" here means a pre-season prediction based on aggregating individual player projections into team run scoring and run prevention, then converting to win% via Pythagorean expectation. Team Year Marcel Proj. Actual W Gap Yakult 2019 67.8 W 59 -8.8 Yakult 2020 54.4 W 41 -13.4 Yakult 2021 64