Rays 2009 player preview: Evan Longoria

February 10, 12:03 AMTampa Bay Rays ExaminerRob Quinn

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What can the 2008 American League Rookie of the Year do for an encore? How about win the MVP award? Last year, Dustin Pedroia joined Ryan Howard and Cal Ripken as the only players to follow up a Rookie of the Year season by winning the MVP award. Many experts believe Longoria will win an MVP award in the future, but it’s probably a stretch to expect it to happen in 2009.

It will be very interesting to see how pitchers attack Longoria heading into the 2009 season. Longoria is a great fastball hitter. Pitchers are aware of this. Only four hitters in the American League saw fewer fastballs than Longoria last season. The fact Longoria batted in the number five spot for much of the season didn’t help. No disrespect to Cliff Floyd, Willy Aybar, or Eric Hinske, but Longoria is much less likely to get a fastball with those guys batting behind him as opposed to, say, Pat Burrell. It remains to be seen how Maddon will structure the lineup, but any way you slice it, Longoria will have improved quality hitting behind him and hopefully the result will be more fastballs for Longoria to hit.

Longoria brings great defense to the field in addition to his offensive fireworks. According to the FanGraphs statistics taking into account range, vicinity plays, and errors, there were three third basemen who were a couple notches above the competition last year. Longoria was one of them. Though he made more errors than the average third baseman, his range is excellent over there and the Gold Glove could very well be in his future. Unfortunately for Longoria, last year’s elite glove men at third base were all in the American League, as he was joined in the top three by Mike Lowell of the Red Sox and Adrian Beltre of the Mariners. I still like Longo’s chances for the Gold Glove in ’09.

The Rays, thankfully, have Longoria under team control through 2016. Longoria should be taking over for Carl Crawford as "the face of the franchise" at some point in the next couple of years (if he hasn't already). Hopefully Longoria will not have to carry the weight all by himself as Crawford did for many years as "the only good player on the Rays." With the young core the Rays are locking up around Longoria and Crawford right now, it shouldn’t be an issue.

My 2009 prediction: .264, 33 HR, 102 RBI, 88 R, .349 OBP

Longoria’s batting average could take a little dip because of Longoria’s high strikeout rate, but the power numbers shouldn’t go anywhere.

Evan Longoria on Baseball Reference

Evan Longoria on Retrosheet

Evan Longoria on FanGraphs

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Think Longoria will win MVP? Think he will fall victim to the sophomore slump? Let everyone know in a comment.

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