Rangers-Angels Rivalry Ready to Roll

A recent Twitter incident with notorious over-tweeter C.J. Wilson was the latest fuel on the fire of the rivalry between the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels.

Wilson tweeted the phone number of Rangers catcher Mike Napoli, for some reason. Ian Kinsler said it was "annoying" and the departure of Wilson from the Rangers to the Angels is the latest reason why these teams just aren't supposed to like each other.

“I don’t even know why he did it,” Napoli told Sporting News. “I’m not taking it as a prank. … I haven’t even talked to him since the end of last season. We don’t have that type of relationship.”

There's a ton of other reasons. First off, the Rangers have surpassed the Angels the past two seasons in the AL West arms race. The Angels dominated the division for much of the 2000s before the Rangers finally broke through in 2010 and 2011, winning the AL pennant both years. The Rangers owned the Angels last season, especially in Anaheim, and did so partly because of the great play they got from catcher Mike Napoli, who the Angels traded last spring to Toronto because they thought he was done and wasn't a good enough defensive catcher. A few days later, the Blue Jays sent him to Texas, and the rest is history. Napoli murdered his former team on several occasions last season.

“Once free agency started, it really got going,” Angels ace Jered Weaver told Sporting News. “When we signed Albert (Pujols) and then C.J. (Wilson), and they came back and got (Yu) Darvish, it was kind of on from that point.”

But as Ron Washington likes to say, baseball is all about what goes on "between the lines", not what goes on on Twitter, and the rivalry between the two super-teams will be no different.

"They know us and we know them," Washington told ESPN Dallas. "We've got an idea of what they'll be pitching against us [in the regular season] and they know what we're pitching against them. We know the type of game they like to play and they know the type of game we like to play. It will be who gets it done between the lines that night."