As I usually do at the end of my winter bowling season, I dedicate a post here to breaking down my league performance with the help of the BowlSK reports. First, the first-ball numbers (numbers before the pipe | character reflect last year’s performance):
Strike percentage: 37.2% | 32.2%
Pocket shots: 66.5% | 67.2%
Carry percentage: 54% (410/759) | 45.7% (333/728)
Double rate: 37.6% (152/404) | 32.7% (110/336)
Average first-ball count: 8.6 | 8.7
Average first-ball non-strike count: 7.8 | 8.0
I was hitting the pocket more often this year, but my carry was down precipitously. However, my first ball counts were up, meaning I was at least leaving more manageable spares, and we’ll see if that had any effect on my overall spare game below:
Overall spare percentage: 55.7% (383/687) | 63.2% (436/690)
Single-pin spare percentage: 66.1% (162/245) | 75.8% (235/310)
Multi-pin spare percentage: 62.6% (209/334) | 64.2% (179/279)
Makeable (non-split) percentage: 64.1% (371/579) | 70.3% (414/589)
Split conversion percentage: 11.1% (12/108) | 21.8% (22/101)
Washout conversion percentage: 25% (10/40) | 30.8% (8/26)
Percentage on single 10 pin: 62.1% (59/95) | 68% (83/122)
Percentage on single 7 pin: 63.6% (35/55) | 70% (49/70)
My rates were up across the board, but I also bowled fewer games than most years (because of two weeks off for the holidays), so I did some math and figured out with ratio and proportion that I was leaving proportionately more spares, but fewer multi-pin spares, so my lack of carry this season was definitely emphasized. I was leaving the 10 a lot more often proportionately (I would have left it 89 times at last year’s rate), but still made it about 6% of the time more often. This was something I definitely wanted to improve on this season, and did.
My average went up a pin (actually a small fraction, but enough to call it a whole pin over)…it’s no coincidence that my improvement on spares was a big part of that, so take this as proof that spares are important.
The Tenth Board 
Math refresher: If you’re confused by ratio and proportion, you should take the denominators in the fractions representing last year’s spare leaves, multiply by 99 (the number of games I bowled this year), and then divide by 105 (the number of games I bowled last year) to find out how many I would have left at last year’s rate.