Bowling Philosophy-September 2011

"A Bowler's Thoughtful Observation in Two Days"
by Thomas Scherrer

It has only been two days since my "return" to "league bowling", and all I got to say is that since I have come back to the horror show that are house shots, I observed this:

1. In three leagues, there was already 3 perfect games shot and they were by 3 people that I never heard of before.  Yesterday, I was a VIP to a 791...not that it was any shock to a series like that, it was only that the bowler (whose name escapes me and yes, I bowled with him all 3 games so sue me for being a bad investigator, but a damn good writer) accomplished a near 800 with a Columbia 300 "Fill In The Color But I Think Gold" Dot.  If I am not mistaken, that ball was made when my mother was in high school.  On a related note, my mom graduated high school in 1981-I think.  Again, my investigative reporting is somewhere in between TMZ and Grantland.com.
2. My girlfriend Michelle bowled on Wednesday and, like all great scientists, observed a very unique difference in how Auburn plays now with the new Kegel machine and lane oil.  The shot starts out roughly the same, with possibly a little more wet-dry to the gutters than what used to be there.  It is as the lanes transition that seems to have gone a different undertaking.  In the past at Auburn, the lanes were already burning up around late first game/early second.  You noticed this even in a doubles league that the lanes were moving quick, lefty or righty.  Imagine a 4-person team then and now you get a massive transition going on with players having to really get inside and circle the lanes with a lot of axis rotation with weaker equipment or cleaner surfaces to retain energy.  Which leads to...
3. Players having to change their styles of play, and most importantly, play straighter angles through the front.  Any directional moves going away from the pocket were not as successful unless you are a) more accurate than say, 99% of bowlers who have ever lived and b) had a ball with some grit to read in the oil better and get the ball to slow down rotationally.  Example #1 and #2 were within 5 feet of me.  My new teammate Jim Lovewell and a former PBA Experience teammate of mine, Eric Kollios had that going on and instead of seeing transition as drastic as everyone else, they saw results (to varying degrees: Kollios struck, Lovewell did not but his pocket percentage was better than most).  This leads to...
4. The rest of us actually finding more success moving back outside late second/early third game with more ball speed...again, if can do it.  Michelle did it Wednesday and shot a 279, basically maxing out at her top speed, which is probably her B-minus game.  On an unrelated note: Michelle's prime is being wasted thanks to no women's bowling tour, so thanks PBA!  I did it in the final game and shot 236, which you could consider my greatest strength.  On a related note: I work in retail, but I digress.
5. I got bored with watching strikes so I came up with new statistics!

 

For readers who recall reading my "Numbers Game" blog in September 2010, I tried to devise some sabermetrical things to think of while bowling.  When you inquire deep within the soul of the game, it is all about numbers.  That is, how many pins you knock down.  How many strikes you throw or how many spares you convert.  Most importantly, did you win or did you lose?  I came up with some simple ideas and tossed them around and tried to tabulate every player in the 2010-11 PBA League.  First of all, too difficult to do alone at this point.  We still haven't embraced the concept of looking at a player's scoresheet to tell us a broader story, so putting it all together for every player is right now, impossible.  With that being said, I elected myself to test myself for the Thursday Knights league.

 

(Note: Yes, yes, and yes...I said last year that judging this off of a handicapped league on a house shot where there is the possibility of dumpers and sandbaggers would make certain numbers hard to judge properly, but I am neither of those things so I am basically telling everyone that I care too damn much about preserving a modest average and I wanna give everything I have to scoring as much as possible, each and every single game, so to hell with the Long Island Method).

 

Case in point: I referenced myself and Jim Lovewell, who struggled to carry despite having figured out how to play on the Brave New World of Auburn Oil.  Had I tracked Jim's night, I probably would have seen him hit the pocket just as much as I did last night, he just didn't knock them all down at once.  I did not talk about my other teammate, Jesse Cote, who shot 298 in the first game last night with his 12th shot in the first game being a massive tug, then he proceeded to not strike for the first half of the second game, and half of those were pocket hits, if that at best.  Jim had nowhere near that trouble in terms of hitting the pocket, but Jesse had the better night, according to the recap sheet (to be fair, he struck from impossible angles and this is by no means, taking a shot at my anchor bowler.  He had area and he used it all night, just like I did for the most part.  Plus, he brought my onto his team so I gotta go easy on him, no?) 

 

Or...did he?

 

Going Next Level on bowlers, I devised a few more stats to make you vomit or cringe or get excited about.  First of all, we can look at my strike percentage for the night (67%), or my Nine or Better (NOB) number, which was 28/33 (84.8%), or PRO Rating (67 Strike %+ 70 Spare %=137, which made my elite-PRO number at 140 pretty close, with one major glitch: what if you don't spare all night, but strike every shot...that is, shoot 900?  Like I said, the stats need some tweaking, but let's just assume 900's don't happen every week....they feel like it now).

 

Let's add these on for some better clarity:

Pocket Carrying Percentage Efficiency (PCP Efficiency)=Basically divide the amount of times you struck by the amount of balls that hit the pocket.  We will take light mixers and high flush to trip 4/6's into account as pocket hits.  Last night, I hit the pocket 28 times out of 33 shots.  I struck on 22 of the 28, which makes PCP Efficiency at 78.5%, meaning that for every 4 times I hit the pocket, I struck more than 3 times last night.  It gives the reader a sense of if the player a) hit the pocket and b) how often did the player strike when they did.  Now let's try on this wrinkle on for size.

 

Average on Ball in Pocket (A-BIP)=taking a derivative straight out of baseball, they have done research computing pitchers and what the league hits off of them when a ball is put in play, known as BABIP.  Consider this no different...sorta.

We are simply cutting bowling up into one simple and logistical premise: what did you average per game when your bowling ball hit the pocket?  It details just how good you are actually scoring in this day's environment in relation to other bowlers (you can certainly add a wA-BIP, which would weigh your A-BIP against other players, but let's take this one step at a time) you are in competition with.  This is how we go about figuring all this out:  for shots that hit the pocket, it becomes it's own 10 frame game.  For example, my first game last night, I was in the pocket every frame.  My score was 246, so that is pretty self-explanatory.  These were my results in the pocket for game 2: X, X, X, X, X, X, X, 9/...that is only 8 frames, so we still need at least two to four frames (remember, you can throw up to 12 shots in a game) to come up with a score for that game.  In game 3, my second frame was in the pocket: strike.  That was the 9th frame of my second A-BIP game.  Then in the third frame of game 3 (10th frame of A-BIP 2), I left a soft 7 pin and spared, but now my next pocket hit would be a "fill shot" to finish the score, which game in the 4th frame: strike.  This is what we come up with:

 

X, X, X, X, X, X, X, 9/, X, 9/X=259

 

Now, since I didn't have enough data for another A-BIP, my average would be for two games, which brings us to this A-BIP: 252.5.  I then hit the pocket another 6 times to end the night going 9/, X, X, X, X, X, meaning I still need more data to complete that game, that is, next week.  

 

School is most certainly back in session.

 

 

For those who have a love and knowledge for bowling, this IS Bowling Philosophy...Namaste.