At the conclusion of last night's Giants massacre of the Rangers, the Fox team looked for any tidbits of hope for the Rangers future.
Eric Karros decided that it was time to invoke statistics. "The Rangers have not lost a game to a visiting lefthander since August 29th," he declared definitively if not hopefully.
See the Giants will be starting lefthanders Jonathan Sanchez and Madison Bumgarner in games 3 and 4 and therefore this "statistic" should give Rangers fans hope. I mean Aug. 29 was nearly two months ago, so for two months the Rangers have not lost to a lefthander at home. That's almost 60 days of defeating lefthanders at home. Pretty definitive huh?
That is until you actually look at the facts. In my new book, I talk about the media's use of pseudo-statistics, numbers used to prove a point that are either false or misleading. In this case, Karros' use of statistics is the latter -- misleading. See the Rangers have actually only focused three lefthanders at home in this timeframe.
Yes, that's right. Three lefthanders. And while CC Sabbathia is certainly an elite pitcher, beating Anaheim's Scott Kazmir and Seattle's Jason Vargas is certainly not on par with defeating Sanchez and Bumgarner.
My point here is not that Texas can't comeback, it's that Karros' definitive statistic was absolutely worthless and really said very little about the Rangers prowess at home against lefthanders.
Perhaps Karros should just stick to acting.