It’s generally accepted by players that baseball is a business, and sometimes teams will make tough decisions that their players don’t completely approve of.
Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria knows that too, but nearly a month later, he’s still not over the deal his team made that sent second baseman Logan Forsythe to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I actually like where we are,” Longoria said, via ESPN’s Jayson Stark. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get over losing Logan, because we got real close and he became one of the clubhouse leaders. So when you take that away, it feels like there’s a much bigger void.”
That’s not what Rays fans will want to hear. Does Longoria think Tampa Bay can contend without Forsythe?
“I do. I do. It’s just a different situation,” Longoria said. “There was so much shuffling. The loss of Logan can’t be overlooked because it kind of casts a cloud. But at the same time, when you look at it in totality, I think that … at the end of the day, we’ve bettered ourselves a little bit.
“You know, I can’t say that we got much better, with losing Logan. But I think that if you take him away and then you insert the pieces that we have, I like it. I think that we’ve positioned ourselves to be right there again.”
Even the compliments sound backhanded. Longoria said the same things at the time of the trade, but most probably figured he’d move on and get over it eventually. That doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen, and while Longoria is a good teammate, that’s not exactly ideal news for Tampa Bay.
