Bass Fishing Aug - Sept 2017 | Page 32

TAKEOFF THE DEAL 2017 BASSMETRICS SHELBY, NC 37 1 1275 91.1% 18.9 ANTHONY GAGLIARDI PROSPERITY, SC 39 3 1192 85.1% 30.7 ANDY MORGAN JEFF SPRAGUE DAVID DUDLEY CODY MEYER SHANE LEHEW BRYAN SCHMITT SHINICHI FUKAE MARK ROSE MICHAEL NEAL BRANDON COBB WESLEY STRADER CLARK REEHM JAMIE HORTON ANALYZING THE STATS THRIFT’S AVERAGE TOURNAMENT FINISH The average finish among all past Anglers of the Year is 20.57th place. Bryan Thrift beat it by nearly two places. He established the benchmark in 2010, when he won AOY with an average finish of 7.6th place. 30 COMPARING THRIFT AND MORGAN’S TOP 10 AND TOP 20 PERCENTAGES Morgan and Thrift each had five top-20 finishes, but Thrift had four top 10s to Morgan’s two, which more or less made the difference in the AOY race. DAYTON, TN POINT, TX LYNCHBURG, VA AUBURN, CA CATAWBA, NC DEALE, MD PALESTINE, TX WEST MEMPHIS, AR DAYTON, TN GREENWOOD, SC SPRING CITY, TN HUNTINGTON, TX CENTERVILLE, AL CHECK PERCENTAGE BRYAN TH RIFT ins, top 10s, champi- onship qualifications and career earnings are the typical stats that fishing fans use to compare FLw tour pros to one another. Generally, the bigger the numbers, the better the pro. yet, as we’ve learned in base- ball in recent years, evaluating performance isn’t just about counting the obvious stats, such as home runs and rbi. the field of sabermetrics, which uses at times complex algorithms to objectively evaluate player per- formance based on a wide range of factors, gives baseball general managers and coaches better information about who to sign to the team and how to use them. a similar concept could apply to how we evaluate fishing per- formance, whether for selecting an FLw Fantasy Fishing team or simply for fun. that in mind, we calculated a list of non-traditional fishing stats, along with some of the usuals, for the top 15 pros in the 2017 FLw tour angler of the year standings to see what we could learn based on a new approach to pro fishing analysis. W By Curtis Niedermier brEakinG Down anGLEr pErForMancE on thE FLw tour 45 36 41 34 28 36 45 45 25 27 45 38 49 Six anglers out of 165 finished in the money about 86 percent of the time, or in six out of seven tournaments. Of those, Michael Wooley had the lowest AOY finish – 33rd. 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1231 1176 1161 1142 1142 1133 1131 1126 1126 1123 1108 1105 1096 87.9% 84% 82.9% 81.6% 81.6% 80.9% 80.8% 80.4% 80.4% 80.2% 79.1% 78.9% 78.3% 25.1 33 35.1 37.9 37.9 39.1 39.4 40.1 40.1 40.6 42.7 43.1 44.4 QUALIFYING ROUND IMPROVEMENT Not surprisingly, the pros at the top of the standings were remarkably con- sistent from day one to day two. FLWFISHING.COM I AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017