The Devil Rays relented and reversed their penurious demotion of top prospect Evan Longoria two weeks after deciding to manipulate his arbitration and free agency years.  Hopefully, this move will erase the bad will generated by the demotion.

With all the attendent hype surrounding Longoria, all his fantasy owners have to decide who to sit to play him or whether they need to keep him on the bench.  A colleague of mine asked me whether he should bench Red Sox 1B/3B Kevin Youkilis for Longoria.

What do you do in that situation?  Can Longoria be reasonably be expected to outperform Youkilis in a 5x5 format?

PECOTA predicts a 25/87/6/.266 with 83 runs scored for Longoria and 17/81/6/.272 with 84 runs scored for Youkilis.  Amongst Longoira's comparables are Paul Konerko and Cal Ripken.  Youkilis draws Sal Bando, Derrek Lee and Tim Salmon.

"Close enough" seems to make the decision easy enough assuming you want to play Longoria.  However, I am a wee bit more cautious given Longoria did not hit well in AAA last season (.269) and wasn't tearing the cover off the ball at the time of recall (.200).  Isn't Youkilis the safer bet to produce given his track record of being able to hit major league pitching (.288 and .279 the past two seasons) and get on-base (.390 and .381)?