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Evan Longoria has had one of the strangest careers of my lifetime as a “hardcore” baseball fan (so let’s call it 2007-now). Comes up in 2008 as a sure-fire, can’t miss prospect. All-Star team first three seasons and he felt like a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009-10. Always a tough out and a rising superstar.
Then, no All-Star nods or an…
Evan Longoria has had one of the strangest careers of my lifetime as a “hardcore” baseball fan (so let’s call it 2007-now). Comes up in 2008 as a sure-fire, can’t miss prospect. All-Star team first three seasons and he felt like a legitimate MVP candidate in 2009-10. Always a tough out and a rising superstar.
Then, no All-Star nods or any honors outside of a 2017 Gold Glove from 2011-17. Ok, no problem. He’s still a tough out and it feels like he especially mashes the Yankees. Feels like he’s still in the conversation for best players at times but he’s gone from rising superstar to actually pretty underrated by no real fault of his ow.
Then, he goes to the Giants. He’s worth 6.2 WAR since the start of 2018 and has become totally irrelevant for a franchise that, for the most part, has remained relevant in that time.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t know if Longo was on a Hall of Fame path when the Giants acquired him. He had 1,700 hits through his age-31 season but getting to 3K was going to be extremely difficult especially in a league with no DH at the time. Just interesting to think about his career trajectory and how quickly he seemingly faded from the national spotlight despite being a consistently reliable player for the Rays.
TL;DR: I wanted to wax poetically about Evan Longoria before going to the dentist.
Father Time is undefeated. The clock struck midnight (or he turned 30, same thing) and he turned into a pumpkin.
even more of a reason for the yanks to go easy on Judge and a huge contract offer until the end of the season. let's see if he makes it thru intact.
If the Yankees win the WS, I’m fine letting Judge walk. 🤷🏻♂️ He’s an incredible player now but let another team deal with 10 years and 400 million.
The Yankees can easily afford to outbid everyone for his services at full-fare. And they will, unless Judge just wants to go somewhere else.
Counterpoint - act like you’re the richest team in baseball, pay the most popular player your franchise has had since Jeter and eat whatever back end of the deal there is.
yes. AND go get Soto as well.
Giving Judge ten years would make the Pujols contract look sane.
Must be another Joc Pedersen, vs. Yankees .063/.118/.250
Post is about Evan Longoria
We could make the post about Eva Longoria ... but that would be pretty Desperate.
When he retires, his video highlight has to be that Game 162 walk-off in 2011, no?
https://www.theidentitytb.com/article/small-details-evan-longoria-home-run-game-162
His bouts with Plantar Faciitis made it so he wasn't full time for a lot of those years and was hobbled when his was playing. Plus playing in the trop with that kinda of injury has to suck.
Craig Biggio retired with a bWAR of 65.5, and Evan Longoria currently has a bWAR of 57.4. I wanted to see how they stack up directly in their age 32 seasons (2018 for Longo, 1998 for Biggio - they're 20 years and 2 months apart in age, just about) through the next three full* seasons of play, as Biggio notoriously had a reputation for sticking around and padding his stats, which one certainly could begin to accuse Evan Longoria of doing as well. Longo has 6.3 bWAR over the 2018-2021 stretch, and Biggio has 16.3 bWAR. Even if you give Evan a hypothetical boost for the lost games in 2020, it's not close. Up through his age 35 season, Craig Biggio had barely started to "compile," where Longoria's annual bWAR isn't anywhere near. Yet somehow, they have those somewhat comparable career WAR numbers. What gives? The answer: in the first 10 full seasons of his career, Craig Biggio has 50.8 bWAR, and Evan Longoria has 51.2. For all the knocks on Biggio hanging around for too long, maybe he wasn't so bad in the second half of his career as that narrative suggests! Over those first full 10 seasons, by the way, they have nearly identical park-adjusted OPS's; it's Evan's defense that puts him narrowly in the lead.
Fun with numbers! And what if Longoria tacks on 4 or 5 more WAR by sticking around a few more years? He may be struggling right now, but last year he slashed .261/.351/.482... not so bad.
*in the case of Longoria, though, one of them was COVID- and ownership-shortened
Biggio was basically a league average player for his last eight years. Average has value of course but it doesn’t speak to his brilliant peak that deserved the HOF. On the other hand I’m not sure if he does get votes absent that long period of average play which carried him over 3,000.
Another version of this, but at a higher level is Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz, from 67-70 was as good as anyone post integration. Then just kept going (and going and going and ...) as average (or modestly below) to fine but never again great.