Rangers GM Chris Young Is FURIOUS At The Houston Astros For Trolling Texas After Winning The AL West

I’ll give a little background here for people who may not be following baseball as closely as I do. There are no more tiebreakers for these divisions anymore, so even though the Astros and Rangers finished with the same record, Houston won the American League West because they owned the tiebreaker. I bring this up because the Rangers had an opportunity on Sunday afternoon to win the American League West. Had they beaten the Seattle Mariners, they would’ve taken home the divisional crown and gotten a bye in the first round of the playoffs. Had they lost and the Astros won, Houston would’ve won the division. 

After celebrating a playoff berth on Saturday night, Texas came out flat and got shut out in the last game of the season against the Mariners. Houston beat the Diamondbacks and won the American League West. Houston’s players and their social media team used this as an opportunity to troll their biggest rival.

I kind of called this. I wrote a blog after the Astros clinched on Sunday, questioning whether or not Texas fumbled the bag. Making the playoffs is worth celebrating, but popping champagne bottles and losing your mind only to cough up the division and a first-round bye the next day isn’t exactly the best look. Houston did what pretty much any other team would do. When you win, you use that as an opportunity to talk shit. That’s exactly what happened. But Rangers GM Chris Young was none too pleased by the Astros trolling.

"I find it ridiculous that that's even a subject honestly. This is the most professional responsible group of players that I've ever been around. We had a very subdued, champagne popping, but beyond that, there was there was no partying there was nothing outlandish," Young said. "These guys had earned the right to pop those champagne bottles and that was the extent of our celebration. It had no impact whatsoever on Sunday's game. And really it's pretty poor journalism to even suggest that honestly, I'm very disappointed in the lack of professionalism of the Houston journalists for putting that out there. It's classless and it's not appropriate and it's completely fabricated. It's wrong."

Chris Young may very well be correct here with his statement. Maybe the Rangers had a 30-minute celebration after clinching a playoff spot on Saturday night. It may have been subdued, but what matters are the final results on the field, and the record will show that when they had an opportunity to clinch the American League West, the Rangers offense, which has been one of the best baseball all year, failed to show up.

The Houston Astros are the ex-girlfriends that scorned lovers just can’t move on from. The sign-stealing stuff happened forever and a day ago, and yet they still are treated as if they were the villains of baseball. Texas was 2.5 games up with four games to go. If you don’t want to have shit talked about you, don’t cough up the division. Do I think that deep down, the Astros view the Texas Rangers as an unprofessional bunch who got shitfaced drunk and coughed up the division the next day? Probably not, but it’s fun to talk shit. That’s what sports are. Color between the lines and settle the shit on the field. I love that we have a legitimate hateful rivalry in baseball again.