The Evan Longoira Trade Question

I am going to try something new on this site as I wrote an article for a baseball site that I was going join as a writer, but things never came to fruition for us and the articles haven't been touched since last Spring.

Last year the Rays saw such a drop off in production from their line-up that no matter how dominate Chris Archer or Jake Ordorizzi were the team wasn’t going to succeed. Tampa proved that even good pitching you see need some hitting as you need to score some runs. Though it was one bad year and he might be up to rebound should they count on that from Evan Longoria or is it time to move on. I know a lot of you might play the age card or the contract card or just the fact that Evan likes Tampa. All I can say is winning with the Rays wouldn’t have the same impact on the fan base that say winning with the Cubs or even the Indians would. But the lack of fandom in the state of Florida is up to cover another day.

Looking at their organization Tampa has always had to develop their own talent and couldn’t buy free agents like other teams as they are small market. However, looking at it from an overall perspective if Price stayed in Tampa would Chris Archer be in the position he is in or did he flash his potential because of the role he was chosen to fill in the organization. Nobody could have known that Archer would have been as good as he did last year and same goes for Ordorizzi.

Long term, can the team sustain keeping Longoria and losing or would it be smarter to try and make a move when the division is weak and set themselves up for the long term instead of looking at the short term. Though I may be looking at this from an outsiders perspective I feel it may provide the team with a different set of eyes then they had before. All I am saying is look at the names that have been available this offseason on the trade market, and think if the Rays fall out of the race again someone wouldn’t call for Longoria. They have done it the past for free agency, but why not do it now for the future. I know Longoria is still young, that’s no question the question is can they produce with him or would they do more without him. I just think not just for the future, but for the sake of the line-up it’s better to have two guys who can produce rather than one just look at the White Sox for example.