The promotions from Makushita to Juryo have been announced, and four rikishi will be moving up: Kizenryu, Kataharima, Daiseido, and the yusho winner Yago. Using highly complex mathematical algorithms and hours of CPU time, I have determined that this means that four guys will also be dropping out of Juryo, losing their sekitori status and going back to doing stable chores. It’s not hard to see that based on the Nagoya results, these four will be Satoyama, Rikishin, Tobizaru, and Kitataiki.

When I posted my Makuuchi banzuke forecast for Nagoya, Josh asked if the same prediction system would work for Juryo. The answer is largely yes (see the caveats below), so here is that forecast for Aki.

In red are the Makuuchi guys dropping down to Juryo, while the guys coming up from Makushita are in green. I still don’t see the logic in the Kaisei/Gagamaru swap for Nagoya, and Gagamaru would likely have ended up in a better spot for Aki had he stayed in Juryo.

Now the aforementioned caveats. I don’t have a great sense for how to place the newly promoted sekitori relative to either each other or the holdovers. Comments welcome.

At the top, J4e Myogiryu and J4w Aminishiki have nearly identical cases for promotion with 10-5 records. They should both be promotable over Tokushoryu, and there isn’t a great case to be made for demoting anyone else to Juryo. I opted for the by-the-numbers scenario of promoting Myogiryu and leaving Aminishiki at J1e, where he can hopefully get his kachi koshi at Aki to essentially guarantee promotion. The NSK could leave them both in Juryo and keep Tokushoryu (or, less likely, Sokokurai) in Makuuchi. Alternatively, they could demote Endo or Okinoumi and bring them both up, though this would be harsh and seems unlikely.