ESPN.com reports that the Tampa Bay Rays’ 3B Evan Longoria agreed to a 6 year, $17.5 million dollar contract that could be worth as much as $44 million over 9 seasons. Pretty good for a kid who has only played 6 major league games. I’m not saying I disagree with locking him up for the future, but that’s setting quite a precedent for young talent. This could significantly affect contract negotiation for talented prospects in the future.

The Rays have become trend-setters with contract negotiation recently.  They have agents throughout the industry upset about their new policy of tacking a few one-year club options on the end the guaranteed term. This is essentially a win-win situation for the club; if the player develops as expected they buy out a few years of arbitration and free agency on the cheap, or if the player falters they simply let the options expire.  On the flip side, the young prospect gets the security these types of deals provide.

Tampa Bay Rays prospect Evan Longoria will make his Major League debut today against the Baltimore Orioles.  Opportunity knocked for Longoria when Willy Aybar was placed on the disabled list Friday after missing his second straight game with a sore left hamstring.  Time to pick him up in fantasy leagues if he’s available because of the tremendous upside; if he plays well enough during this stint he could keep the job for good.

Fox Sports columnist Ken Rosenthal writes that while many fans may be shocked that the Rays demoted Evan Longoria to Class AAA even after posting a 1.002 OPS this spring, it may turn out for the better.  The Rays say they want to give Longoria a little more time to develop, a strategy that every fantasy owner can agree worked well with the Brewers and last season’s ROY Ryan Braun.  So, rather than starting Longoria in the Majors with the possibility of him having an Alex Gordon-like slow start, the Rays will keep Longoria in the minors for at least three weeks to make sure he is ready (which he is) and more importantly to ensure that they get an extra year out of him before he becomes a free agent.  Keep an eye on him if he’s available on your waiver wire.

Lost amid news of top overall prospect Evan Longoria getting optioned to Triple-A was news of another top Rays prospect getting cut.  Rays SS of the future, Reid Brignac was optioned to Triple-A Durham as well.  It seems the acquisition of Jason Bartlett from the Twins in the Delmon Young trade has delayed the big league appearance of Brignac for a while.  The young shortstop handled the news well:

“I’m not disappointed at all… I just got to go down to Triple-A and keep working until I get where I need to be. They’ve seen me, they’ve seen how I play.  Just going to keep playing hard, keeping working hard and see what happens.”

At only 22, Brignac still has plenty of time to develop his skills and still come up to Tampa as the offensive SS he projects to be.  Even if he does get the call-up this year, he probably won’t be fantasy relevant until 2009 or later.

We’ve been anticipating it for a while now, but still holding out hope that the Rays wouldn’t do it.  The Rays informed Evan Longoria that they were reassigning him to minor league camp after the Rays game on Monday.  Longoria said that he was “a little bit let down” by the decision, and that the Rays did not give him any kind of timetable for his return to the show.

The Rays pointed to the fact that Longoria has only had 104 ABs above the Double-A level.  They say they want to avoid a situation similar to how the Alex Gordon call-up played out last year.  Really, though, it all comes down to the economics.  If Longoria stays in the minors for even a few weeks, the Rays can delay his free agency until after 2014.  If they wait a few months to call him up, similar to Ryan Braun’s situation last year, then they can avoid Longoria qualifying for Super-Two early arbitration eligibility.  While there’s no question about whether Longoria can succeed in the majors, it becomes a question of whether or not the Rays can succeed this season even with Longoria for a full season.  In the stacked AL East, not many people think the vastly improved Rays can compete in 2008-2009, with or without Longoria.  If the Rays are targeting next year or the year after as the year they start to compete, why not delay the arbitration clock on Longoria as much as possible.  In short, while any true baseball fan would love to see what this kid could do this with a fulls eason, this move made all the sense in the world for the Rays.

Nobody seems to know whether Rays third baseman prospect Evan Longoria will start in the majors this year, not even manager Joe Madden.  Madden said on February 13 that he would make a decision in a month, so one would expect to hear the news soon.   In terms of performance, Longoria has done everything the Rays could have asked for.  In eleven games he’s batting .318 with 2 doubles, a triple, a home run, with five RBIs, 5 walks, and a .464 on-base percentage.

According to Brittany Ghiroli of MLB.com, the Rays have been known to take their time in developing youngsters and will ultimately do what is right for Longoria.  At this point, fantasy managers should assume he makes the team and draft Longoria as a rookie sleeper with major upside.

Rays prospect and anticipated starting third baseman Evan Longoria took the Twins’ Juan Rincon deep on Tuesday for his first jack of the spring.  He was pinch-hitting in the top of the eighth inning.

Although the Rays have not made a decision on whether Longoria will be the starter, by all accounts he seems ready.  He is batting .389 with a HR and 5 RBIs in 9 games this spring and it is pretty obvious that he is mentally prepared for the Bigs.

“Honestly, I’ve been comfortable since Day 1,” Longoria said. “Coming into the clubhouse, we have a pretty different look this year. There’s a lot of leadership in the clubhouse and it’s a totally different feel. I’ve been pretty comfortable since I got here.”

Evan Longoria remains our top offensive rookie sleeper for this year’s fantasy draft.

• Jacoby Ellsbury ran down a deer. In related news, The Boston Globe reports that the Cubs are interested in Coco Crisp, although the Red Sox are not enamored by Cubs’ offer of pitcher Jason Marquis or minor league outfielder Sam Fuld. If Crisp does get traded it could obviously have huge implications for Ellsbury’s upcoming fantasy season.
• Bill Chastain of MLB.com writes that Evan Longoria has done enough to earn the starting job at third base, and batting him further down in the order would allow him to settle in at the beginning of the season with less pressure.
• Lisa Winston of MiLB.com reports that 2007 #1 overall draft pick out of Vanderbilt, David Price, hit the first batter he faced, then struck out the side in the left-hander’s first appearance with the Rays. Tampa manager Joe Maddon and pitching coach Jim Hickey are all about this kid:

“He’s handled himself so well that regardless of what he does on the mound, we just want him to get out there and enjoy himself in his first ‘big league’ game,” Maddon said Friday. “He’s got a lot of self-confidence, he’s very motivated and directed and has a tremendous amount of poise about him. We just want him to pitch and be a Ray.”

“He’s extremely well-armed with a plus-plus fastball and an extremely sharp slider,” Hickey said. “[He has] a very good feel for a good changeup and a nice delivery, but to me, the thing that is most impressive about him is the type of person he is. He’s a first-class citizen, he’s an extremely hard worker, he’s very coachable. He comes early, he stays late.”

• Rays rookie Jeff Neimann, their first pick in the 2004 draft, went 3 no-hit innings with 2 walks and 2 strikeouts; he has a 0.00 ERA so far this spring. Neimann was 12-6 with a 3.98 ERA with Triple-A Durham last year and could be considered for a spot in Tampa’s rotation.
• Updating an earlier post: the Twins’ Carlos Gomez, acquired in the Johan Santana trade, went 2 for 5 with an RBI triple, a stolen base, and 2 runs scored. He’s got plenty of speed, and confidence to go with it.

So, you’re diligently preparing for your fantasy draft and searching desperately for this year’s Ryan Braun - the rookie fantasy sleeper stud that takes everyone by surprise and catapults your squad to a championship. Unfortunately, all you can find are experts’ “Top 100 Prospect” lists, which include prospects that are still a year or two away, or so-called “Sleeper” lists consisting of 2nd and 3rd year players that everyone in your league has already heard of (and are already planning to draft before you). What if - hypothetically - someone had organized a constantly updated list of rookie fantasy sleepers, tiered by starting status, ranked by predicted fantasy impact, and linked to recent news on each rookie, that you could have running in the background of your draft as a quick reference?

• Look no further than the MLBProspectNews.com 2008 Rookie Fantasy Sleepers page, located under the MLBPN Features section of our navigation bar.

As always, some good prospect news from an article by ESPN’s legend Peter Gammons:

• Evan Longoria has lived up to the hype this spring, impressing everyone with not only his bat but his stellar glove work as well. Gammons notes that scouts believe Longoria could go for 30 HR in his rookie season if he’s allowed to play all of it. But as Gammons notes, there is still speculation that the Rays might delay his call-up to avoid super-two status. For fantasy sake, we all hope they just let him play.
• A few people in Dodgers camp think that phenom Clayton Kershaw should be with the major league team now. Russell Martin was quoted saying that Kershaw is going to help the Dodgers this year, in line with a similar quote by Joe Torre a couple weeks ago. That the Dodgers are even discussing bringing Kershaw up so early (remember he’s only 19) is testament to his uncanny skill.  There was word today that the Dodgers have decided to keep Kershaw at the big league camp through the rest of spring training, but Joe Torre said there is almost zero chance he makes the big league rotation.
• Gammons also notes that Dodgers coach Larry Bowa is very impressed with SS prospect Chin-Lung Hu.  His quote was “He can really play defense.”  Don’t look for Hu at SS in Los Angeles as long as Furcal is healthy.  But Furcal’s contract expires after this season, so the Dodgers would love for Hu to be ready to take over at short next year.
• Check out this gem of a quote Gammons pulled up from one of the Scouts in Arizona this spring:  “The best young pitcher I’ve seen in two years out here is Oakland’s Henry Rodriguez. He throws 98 with a devastating breaking ball.”  Gammons notes that Rodriguez will not start the season with Oakland, but given these comments and the abundance of opportunity for young players in Oakland this year, it could only be a matter of time before we see this 21-year-old with the big club.  That’s pretty interesting stuff, considering Rodriguez isn’t on many people’s radar as a top prospect.  He is the #8 prospect in the A’s system according to BaseballAmerica.