We already knew that Evan Longoria was going to miss a big chunk of time with a torn hamstring. Now we get the formalities - Longoria has been placed on the 15-day disabled list, and the Tampa Bay Rays have called up Will Rhymes to occupy his roster spot.
You look at the Rays, and Longoria's the last guy they'd want to see sidelined. It's a team loaded with talent, but they don't have another all-around talent quite like Evan Longoria. They have Ben Zobrist, who's amazing, but he's not as amazing as Evan Longoria, and can anybody believe that Ben Zobrist is as good as he is? He's Ben Zobrist! Come on, be serious, statistics!
Rhymes is an infielder who's been with the Tigers before, and he's up as depth, while the Rays will look to Elliot Johnson and Jeff Keppinger to man third base. In the event of a disaster, they could conceivably look elsewhere, but this is the Rays. Most likely they'll just get by until their superstar returns.
On that note - general manager Andrew Friedman:
"He's always been a pretty good healer. He's had some hamstring issues in the past and has come back from them pretty quickly, relatively speaking," Friedman said. "We're not going to put a firm timeline on it, but to get back here, I would say a best-case scenario for him to get back before six weeks or around six weeks."
In reality, no baseball team would be crippled by the loss of one player. But if a team could be crippled by the loss of one player, it'd be a player a lot like Evan Longoria. This is somewhat short-term, but it's also something significant.