Evan Longoria News

Toronto Blue Jays catcher Raul Chavezkneels at the plate as Tampa Bay Rays' Ben Zobrist, Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena celebrate Zobrist's three-run homer off Blue Jays starter Brian Tallet.

The Rays are wearing T-shirts, putting up billboards, setting up laptops at the stadium and joking about reassigning interns to voting duty in an effort to get 1B Carlos Pena elected as the final member of the AL All-Star team.

Despite the snub of J.P. Howell a.k.a the Iceman, the Rays will send four all-stars to the mid summer classic for the first time in the franchise's history.

This is the point where I'm supposed to whine about the selections for Baseball's All-Star Game and identify which worthy players were left off the respective AL and NL rosters.

New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter remained the overall leader among American League players in fan balloting for the 2009 All-Star Game.

Just last week, the Tampa Bay Rays were the hottest team in the majors led by a surging offense.

Dioner Navarro is feeling the heat. A year after being an all star, Navarro is making a legitimate case for being the worst player in baseball.

Maddon, the AL manager for the July 14 game, named Zobrist, the superb super-utility man, to the All-Star squad, joining three Tampa Bay teammates who were voted in.

St. Petersburg, FL - Four members of the Tampa Bay Rays were named to the American League All-Star team.

Carl Crawford lines up with his fellow All-Stars before the game in San Francisco.

Manager Joe Maddon admitted it wasn't easy and there were some "close calls," but he was comfortable with the American League All-Star roster he sent in by Saturday afternoon's deadline.

One of the strange things about the Rays' rise to prominence last season was that when it came time to fill out the All-Star Game rosters, Tampa Bay couldn't really offer up a slew of obvious candidates.

In the Rays ' first 11 years, they didn't have anyone named player of the month.

The Rays rang in the halfway point of the season with a loss Friday on a steamy night in Texas.

Give the fans a hand for an All-Star performance. Albert Pujols, absolutely. Joe Mauer, right on the money.

The Rays are arguably the hottest team in baseball. And like most of the times they have put a winning streak together, manager Joe Maddon said, "It pretty much starts with pitching, and it pretty much ends with pitching, too." On Tuesday, it was right-hander Matt Garza who continued the starting rotation's recent string of success, giving up just ...

Back on Christmas Eve 2008, Dave Cameron said of all the non starting major league players that deserved a full-time job, Willy Aybar stood out from the rest of the pack.

Longoria, who missed six starts in early June due to hamstring tightness and another last week when he felt discomfort again, has said his leg hasn't been 100 percent since.

The Rays hosted Kenny Diekroeger, their second-round pick from the recently-completed First-Year Player Draft, on Sunday morning at Tropicana Field.

Maddon said he decided to rest Longoria as a precaution because of a twinge in the previously injured hamstring that forced him to leave Wednesday's game after the seventh inning.