Oh to be young and rich. Evan Longoria rich. To have your current contract reworked and to be blended in with the new contract…must be nice. Crazy rich kind of nice. Evan longoria has many reasons to be smiling after agreeing to a new contract that will carry him well into his mid to late 30’s.The deal is a $136.6 million, 10-year contract that adds six guaranteed seasons and $100 million.
”I always wanted to be kind of a benchmark player … the guy that you could think about or associate with the organization,” Longoria said. ”My goal from Day One was to be the first player that played their whole career here, to be the first guy that came into the organization and went out in the organization, and played all the years in between. There’s no better place for me.”
The Rays were also very happy to make this deal happy because in their words:
”It’s a very exciting day for us,” Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said. ”For Evan to have the confidence in us, and I know the confidence that we have in him, to re-up so to speak for the long haul. This is just an enormous commitment for us.” A side benefit for having Longoria sign a deal like this helps the Rays in attracting more free agents with star power. This kind of deal will have a direct effect on the Mets negotations with star third baseman David Wright. Wright is only 2 years older than Longoria and still has his best years in frontof him. Will the Mets pay 10 years 136 million? Probably not but somewhere David Wright is definitely looking at those numbers for himself.
smallthoughtsinasportsworld 
Longoria being the lynch pin to the Rays , but herein lies the issue , no one comes to watch the goddamn team when they play at home .
It’s obvious now with that hike in pay , the team won’t be looking to resign BJ Upton . Well not at the asking price of the player and his agent .
if no one comes to watch them now and he (longoria is there what do you think would happen if they didn’t sign him and lost him to a team like the Yankees or RedSox no one would really come to watch.
The Rays are like the Buccaneers here within the Tampa Bay area . No one comes to watch either team play at home , be it at the Ray J or Tropicana Field .
The fans within the area , are fair weather fans , completely void of intelligence along with the asinine members of the print and tv media in the locale . Hell they all want the county government to build the Rays a new venue , when the county government is strapped for cash and the ownership group of the Rays are not even prepared to even make an attempt of goodwill on their part of even paying in part for any proposed new venue.
By the way , how is that ” white elephant known as Citi-Field working out for the Mets ? Bloomberg , being the a#s that he is , took so much pride in the ground breaking , only to see that edifice rarely filled to capacity, while an uncompetitive and completely gutless team plays there .
I can’t speak for the goings on in Tampa but in New York …the Wilpons are not known to be very bright, how do you build a ball park and not taylor it to your team? Or decide what kind of team you are going to build? Either you’re a speed team or power team but be a team. Citifield is like the New Yankee stadium nice pretty but too expensive which is why it isn’t filled. hard core baseball fans like us don’t go to games because we can’t afford it. By the way, the yankees have problems filling their park too, for the same reason
The Wilpons and Saul Katz should be in prison for their fraudulent acts . However , the bigger joke was the fact that the lead attorney Irving Picard for the plaintiffs in the Madoff scandal sought to take a settlement that only paid less than 16 cents on the dollar for $1.3 billion sought from the Mets’ organization .
The ball club itself is still mired in a financial morass, yet they’re offering David Wright a multi year multi million deal . Sandy Alderson and J P Riccardi , are , jackasses !
As for that white elephant known as Citi Field why the hell was it built ? Michael Bloomberg can’t sort out the city’s financial woes , but yet he uses the city’s resources to aid a group of butt-head millionaires . Is it any wonder this country is looked upon with a great deal of derision ! The political leaders here at all levels are innately stupid !
Of the two principal owners of the Mets , Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon . The most disingenuous might just be Wilpon , not that Katz , is said to be any better at all .