Astros, Rangers: the rivalry that shouldn’t have been created

The Lone Star Series is one of the most confusing rivalries in all of baseball. With the Houston Astros joining the American League in 2013, the Texas Rangers finally got to play the team down south at a more consistent rate, but why is this series so highly praised with a trophy?

There isn’t too much history between the two teams, while Houston was bouncing around the National League for most of their major league tenure. With the Rangers owning the past two decades with larger margins of wins, the Astros have turned it around immensely, but both sides should come together and acknowledge there isn’t a strong rivalry in place.

While the Astros have been demolishing the Rangers in recent seasons, they continued to tear up the Dallas team on Friday.

The Lone Star Series has been nothing but a set up to engage a rivalry between two teams that haven’t had the most success in MLB. From some small bickering, you can tell this is nothing like the Yankees and the Red Sox or the Cubs and the Cardinals. The Astros are more rivals with the Yankees or the Dodgers than the desolate Rangers.

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Teams will go through rebuilds, but Dallas hasn’t had much success in those days, especially with a weakened farm system. With all this banter in the forefront of your mind, the Astros demolished the Rangers on the mound and in the batter’s box on Friday. As Zack Greinke looked to redeem his recent struggles, the right-hander went seven strong innings with only three runs allowed.

With Jose Altuve taking a rest day, the Robel Garcia experiment at leadoff didn’t pan out, as the switch-hitter went 1-for-5. Other than that, the Astros totaled 10 runs on 10 hits.

As the bottom third of the lineup slashed six hits in 10 at bats, Kyle Tucker, Myles Straw and Martin Maldonado found some grass and seating to show their slumps aren’t forever.

This hatred for the Lone Star Series isn’t coming from a biased Astros fans that thinks the Rangers are a struggling team or mad at them for their success in the early 2010s. My thoughts are solely on how “good rivalries” are about tradition and both teams being good against each other, which isn’t evident for both parties. While many fans don’t really think of this matchup as a rivalry, just think about how the cities as a whole are more “rivals” than their baseball teams are.

Both sides can agree that this rivalry is forced, and props to them for looking at a way to make these matchups more interesting. All in all, Houston is looking to win the series on Saturday at 6:10 p.m. with Luis Garcia on the mound, who still has not recorded a major league win.