Column: When Rangers and Astros meet, their bad blood quickly boils

The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers will gather at the Ballpark in Arlington, Texas, on Friday for the first of six games in 13 days between the American League West rivals.

Pleasantries will not be exchanged.

The last time the teams met, in early May, Astros right-hander Lance McCullers zipped a fastball behind the back of Rangers slugger Mike Napoli, who had homered in his previous at-bat. McCullers was peeved that teammates Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel were hit by pitches earlier in the May 1 game.

Napoli and McCullers exchanged icy glares and took a few steps toward each other. Both benches emptied, and there was some spirited pushing, shoving and jersey grabbing, but no real punches were thrown.

There was more action outside Minute Maid Park, where several vicious blows were exchanged in a fistfight — captured on smart-phone video and posted to YouTube, of course — between five or six Astros and Rangers fans.

A July 2015 benches-clearing incident between the clubs began with then-Houston catcher Hank Conger jawing at Texas second baseman Rougned Odor and ended with Rangers manager Jeff Banister sticking his finger in the chest of Astros manager A.J. Hinch.

“The coaches have gotten after it, the players have gotten after it, the fans have gotten after it … there’s something that’s going to be entertaining, to say the least, when we get together,” Houston ace Dallas Keuchel said. “So you’ve got to keep your head on a swivel and pay attention to each and every pitch.”

The Lone Star State rivalry does not run as deep or as hot as Yankees-Red Sox, Dodgers-Giants and Cubs-Cardinals, teams whose players, coaches and fans were mixing it up for a good half-century before the Astros (1962) and Rangers (1972) came into existence.

Texas-Houston began to percolate in 1997, when interleague play brought the teams together, and simmer in 2013, when the Astros moved to the AL West after spending their first 51 years in the National League.

The rivalry moved to rolling boil when the Astros went from three-year tank artists—they lost 106 games or more from 2011-2013—to World Series contenders in 2015, while the Rangers continued an extended run as one of the AL’s elite teams.

“Things have gotten a bit salty between us, there’s definitely a little edge to it,” Hinch said. “We’ve been on the field to say hello a couple of times. But it’s good for baseball, and it’s good for the state of Texas. I think it’s one of the more underrated rivalries in baseball.”

For a year and a half, the rivalry was as one-sided as an early Mike Tyson fight. The Rangers went 24-7 against the Astros from July 2015 through 2016, their dominance helping them overcome a nine-game late July deficit to edge out Houston for the AL West title in 2015 and repeat as division champions in 2016.

“That’s been our Achilles’ heel the last few years,” Keuchel said. “If we even sniff .500 ball against them, we’re right in the thick of things last season.”

The Astros took a step toward reversing the trend when they won three of four against the Rangers in early May, with super utility man Marwin Gonzalez striking the most memorable blow of the series, an eighth-inning grand slam that gave Houston an 8-7 come-from-behind victory on May 2.

Texas lost three of four games after the Astros series to fall to 13-20 on May 8. Speculation began to swirl that the Rangers, with valuable pitching assets such as Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish, would be huge sellers at the July 31 trade deadline.

A 10-game winning streak, the fourth-longest in club history, from May 9-19 snuffed out that talk. Napoli and Joey Gallo combined for seven homers and 17 RBIs during the run to help keep Texas relevant in the West.

But the Astros appear well-equipped to fend off the Rangers and put themselves in a position to fulfill the vision Sports Illustrated had for them in 2014, when the magazine, in a nod to their youth movement, proclaimed them on its cover as “Your 2017 World Series Champs.”

The pitching staff, behind a resurgent Keuchel and McCullers and relief revelation Chris Devenski, entered Friday having allowed the fewest runs in the AL (180) while leading the league in ERA (3.51), strikeouts (469) and opponents batting average (.228).

Keuchel, the sinker-ball specialist who was slowed by a shoulder injury last season, has regained his 2014 Cy Young Award-winning form, going 7-0 with an AL-low 1.84 ERA before going on the disabled list because of a pinched nerve in his neck last weekend. He is expected back this week.

The hard-throwing McCullers, slowed by a sore elbow in 2016, is 5-1 with a 2.43 ERA in 10 starts, striking out 65 and walking 17 in 59⅓ innings. He takes a 22-inning scoreless streak into Sunday’s start against Baltimore.

Devenski, a 25th-round pick out of Cal State Fullerton in 2011, has used his lethal fastball-changeup combination to go 3-3 with a 3.21 ERA in 16 appearances, striking out 46 and walking eight in 28 innings.

The Astros bolstered a strong young position-playing core — a group headed by shortstop Carlos Correa, second baseman Altuve, outfielder George Springer and Gonzalez — with veterans Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and Josh Reddick, who added much-needed power from the left side and some clubhouse wisdom.

“We don’t quit, there’s that never-say-die mentality, we’ve been down in a lot of games and come back to win,” Springer said, noting Houston’s 17 comeback victories. “We understand we’re never truly out of a game.

“With Beltran and McCann, those guys have some big-game experience. They’ve kind of shown us the ropes on how to not quit, to not back down from anything.”

The Astros, who entered Friday with a major league-best 32-16 record, don’t dwell on their shortcomings against Texas. Beltran, McCann, Reddick and outfielder Nori Aoki did not play for Houston last year.

And third baseman Alex Bregman, 23, and Gurriel, the Cuban first baseman, weren’t called up until late July and late August last season, so they missed the Astros’ season-opening 7-17 faceplant.

“It was easy for me to cast that stuff aside, mostly because I don’t want to talk about it,” Hinch said. “And half of the position-playing group wasn’t here, so they don’t know what it was like to go through the last couple of seasons.

“I didn’t want to drag that into this season. That was easy because half my players didn’t know about it and the other half didn’t want to talk about it.”

mike.digiovanna@latimes.com

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