Evan Longoria is the face of the Tampa Bay Rays franchise for two reasons.
He was a major part of the Rays’ best years, and he’s the lone player left from the team’s biggest accomplishment.
Longoria was the 2008 version of Bryce Harper or Mike Trout, the new kid in town who quickly assumed the identity of the team. The Rays had their first winning season with Longoria at third base and went to their first World Series. He clubbed four home runs in a seven-game American League Championship Series to help beat a Boston Red Sox team that had won the World Series the year before.
Tampa Bay called up Longoria on April 12, 2008. Four days later, he signed a nine-year contract that featured three club options at the end. In 2012, he signed an extension through 2022, with a club option for the next year. That deal begins in 2017 and totals $100 million guaranteed, with a ceiling of $19.5 million in 2022. It will expire shortly before his 38th birthday, meaning he likely will begin and end his career with the Rays and see his No. 3 jersey retired.
Whether Tampa Bay has a World Series banner by then depends on whether the young Rays can take the same leap that Longoria did and whether the Rays can afford to keep them.
“We’ve had great teams. We’ve done special things,” Longoria says. “I continue to believe in the organization, what the vision is for us. And, really, that’s what you have to do.”
It’s not surprising that Longoria is the only player left in Tampa Bay from the 2008 team. After all, only six of those Rays have played a game for anybody in 2016.
But over the years, the Rays have lost core players or traded them before they hit free agency.
The group includes pitchers David Price, James Shields, Scott Kazmir, Matt Garza, Rafael Soriano and Wade Davis, outfielder Carl Crawford and infielders Ben Zobrist and Melvin Upton.
They also lost general manager Andrew Friedman to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Manager Joe Maddon used an opt-out clause in his deal to become the Chicago Cubs manager.
The Rays did hold on to Chris Archer, the All-Star right-hander whom they got from the Cubs in exchange for Garza. He could have become a free agent after the 2019 season but signed a deal that allows the Rays to pick up his option after 2020 and 2021.
The Rays won the AL East for a second time in 2010, went to three playoffs after the 2008 breakout season and finished over .500 for six consecutive seasons. But they went 77-85 in 2014 and 80-82 in 2015.
This year’s edition is a lot like the others: young, blessed with young pitching and held back by intermittent hitting.
And fewer are watching. Tampa Bay drew 2.5 million in its first season (1998). It drew about half of that in 2015 and has only averaged more than 20,000 fans in four seasons. It didn’t even break 2 million in 2009, the year after the Rays fascinated the region with their AL championship.
The attendance has bugged Rays players, and Maddon had trouble holding his tongue. Longoria says it’s part of the trade-off.
“It’s something I’ve learned to steer clear of,” he says. “People can make their own decisions on whether they come out to a ballgame. You’ve got to keep winning and plugging away. It’s my job to play baseball.
“The community has embraced me and my family. It’s been a part of my life for the past 10 years. It’s tough to call any other place home. I was born and raised back here (Southern California), but Tampa Bay has been home to me. I’m not a big boater, and I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m fishing. But I do enjoy waking up and seeing the water, seeing what the weather is doing out there.”
It helps that the Rays front office knows to handle trades. The club sent Price to the Detroit Tigers in late July 2014 in a three-way deal that brought left-hander Drew Smyly to town. Through seven starts this season, Smyly had struck out 58 in 49 2/3 innings with an excellent WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) of 0.99.
Smyly missed three months last season with a shoulder injury, but he didn’t need surgery.
“I think I was just weak in my shoulder, because I neglected it when I was younger,” he says.
He can make four pitches go where he wants them to, and the league hasn’t caught up to his sneaky velocity.
“When you make the decision to trade somebody like David Price, the whole organization is affected,” says Chaim Bloom, a vice president of baseball operations who aids president of baseball operations Matthew Silverman. “But we had a lot of time to scout other teams, and it was obvious which teams would be the most interested. We looked at Drew as a guy who could step right in.”
At Arkansas, Smyly was one year behind Dallas Keuchel, who won the Cy Young Award with the Houston Astros last season.
“He took me under his wing,” Smyly says. “But this organization does a good job of identifying each guy’s strengths. They help you understand how to go about certain counts with hitters, and that was new to me. What makes me good is keeping the hitter guessing.”
Longoria says it’s tough to compare pitchers.
“It’s ... kind of like apples and oranges,” he says. “David is a great friend. But since Drew came over, he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball. It’s been more like apples and apples. We got the best possible thing for David.”
Longoria turned 30 in October, but is it an old 30? He has played at least 151 games in five seasons, at a physically abusive position. His on-base-plus-slugging percentage dropped below .800 in each of the past two seasons, and he was hitting .260 with 19 RBI through 38 games this year.
“I did different things over the winter,” he says. “I tried to come in 5 to 7 pounds heavier and then tried to keep them there, which I have, and I did more weightlifting and less plyometrics. The goal is to keep my strength for a longer period.”
The Rays hope it works. They have Longoria, for better or worse.
Whicker reported from Anaheim, Calif.
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