Texas Rangers drawing the ire of baseball fans after decision regarding series with Houston Astros

In the midst of a major disaster affecting Houston and the Houston Astros, the Texas Rangers let pettiness get in the way of a good decision Monday

The Houston Astros are in the midst of a natural disaster in their home town of Houston. Hurricane Harvey has made the city of Houston a disaster area, likely requiring significant time to clean up from the immense flooding brought on by the hurricane. The Texas Rangers ended up drawing the ire of baseball fans due to their “treatment” of the Astros.

The situation

The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers have a scheduled series this week that was supposed to take place in Houston. It was to be played Tuesday through Thursday of this week in Houston, including a Wednesday night game on ESPN. When the extent of the damage of the storm became apparent this weekend, it was assumed on a number of baseball talk shows and such that the Astros and Rangers would simply swap their remaining home series as both had midweek three-game series left in the season, with the Rangers hosting the Astros on Monday through Wednesday of the last week of the season in late September.

Instead, on Monday, as Major League Baseball announced that the games would be moved to Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, the following was released by multiple Houston news outlets:

This led to very strong negative reactions, especially from Texas natives, who were bonding together to support Houston by sending millions of dollars of support as well as sending hundreds and thousands of relief workers to help those displaced. This sentiment was shared by many, who began to call the team the “Arlington Rangers”, stating the team had no spirit of Texas in them:

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Now, this is not the entire story, but this is something that seems to be both financially and competitively driven on the Texas Rangers part. In an interview with an MLB official, Ken Rosenthal reported that two primary reasons behind the switch to Tampa Bay were that Texas Rangers officials felt that their season ticket holders would not have adequate time to be able to take advantage of the shifted game schedules, and that the change to a series in Houston would mean that the Rangers would have four road series before finishing their season with a home series against Oakland over the season’s final weekend.

Of course, the Rangers were much closer to the wild card before they were swept by last place Oakland this past weekend, so taking care of their own business would have helped their wild card standing, which is fading fast as it is.

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Currently, no decisions have been made about this weekend’s series against the New York Mets, but the Astros and Major League Baseball have already worked with the Tampa Bay Rays to secure Tropicana Field for that series as well as the Rays will continue to be on a road trip.