I May Have Forgotten Someone...

In March Buster Olney gave his top 10 most indispensable players and I responded with my list, not that he or anyone else would actually see my response, but I did it. We didn't agree on everyone, and there is one person in particular who Buster had on that I left off which really makes me look foolish now. Buster even now has a full article on him in ESPN the Magazine, and that player is Evan Longoria.

Olney only had him 10th, but I left him off my list completely and this is what I had to say:
"The Rays didn't have Longoria to start the year, and missed him during other parts of the regular season and they still went to the World Series. Again, he's a great player but he's not indispensable, that's not an insult to Longoria it's a compliment to the Rays."

How stupid does that sound now? Very stupid, very very stupid. That was a pretty shortsighted move on my part. I mean I had a point, or at least I think I had a point. My reasoning was that the Rays still were a great team, that even without Longoria they were good. Obviously I was wrong now, and was likely wrong then, I mean just look at what he did while he was missing time:

Last August he got hit by a pitch, broke his right wrist and was on the disabled list for a month while his teammates tried to hold on in the AL East. Ravizza was watching the Rays on TV and caught a shot of Longoria in the dugout pulling his batting gloves out of his pocket. Later, Ravizza called with a question: "Were you mentally preparing for your at-bats?" Longoria told him yes, that each time his replacement came up, he would put on his gloves and visualize the entire at-bat, pitch by pitch. And when the AB was over, he'd take off the gloves.

Wow.

Baseball's most indispensable and baseball's best are two different lists, but Evan Longoria has to be on the top 10 of each. He's David Wright with the power that you wish Wright had, and the fielding that everyone thinks Wright has. It's only the first week of May and Longoria already has been worth 2.5 wins. Longoria was a great player the minute he stepped on the field, and he's only getting better. You can name a few players better than Longoria, but seriously I dare you to name 10. Really, go on and try.

Pujols, Utley, Hanley, Johan, Mauer...yea I can't think of any others either, and even those are arguable, very arguable.