Rays' Longoria finds swing at right time

There are different ways to tell when a player is really on a roll.

Those of us watching from the outside look mostly at the numbers, and Evan Longoria's have been noteworthy lately.

Entering Monday night's start against the Angels, he had homered eight times in 25 games since July 18 after enduring a stretch of 18 games without a homer. That says his power stroke is back, as do blasts like the one he hit to center field at Safeco Field on Saturday - no cheap, down-the-line job there.

To the player himself, though, it often comes down to feel. And on that front, there's no doubt in Longoria's mind about how well he's playing these days.

"My swing has felt, this last week and a half or so, as good as it's felt all year," he said. "You get into streaks where you hit homers and you hit for power and you feel good at the plate, and sometimes you're not. I'm in kind of one of those stretches right now where, fortunately, my swing feels good, because we need the guys in the middle of the lineup to hit. We need to produce some runs and win some games."

A youngster no more, the two-time All-Star knows picking the team up when it's struggling is one of his responsibilities.

"He likes the moment," said Manager Joe Maddon. "You can count on him in a moment."

Longoria's 83 RBIs this season have him tied for second in the American League and are two shy of his season total from 2008. His 24 homers are three short of what he posted last year.

That progression is welcome and expected, but Longoria knows his most important baseball this year has yet to be played. And he believes his recent surge is attributable at least in part to the intensity being ratcheted up as the playoff race tightens.

"I've kind of put the pressure on myself a little bit more to kind of get going and do as much as I can to help the team win," he said. "I was kind of in one of those phases before where, it's not like I wasn't trying, but I wasn't really getting upset at myself if I wasn't getting it done. I kind of felt like it was time to kick myself in the butt and get things going here."

Maddon said he has seen that approach manifest itself in Longoria's pitch selection. Elite hitters - particularly those known for their power - might only see a couple of pitches each game that are truly in their wheelhouse.

The trick is to maximize those opportunities when they arise, and Longoria has done a better job of that recently after some ugly mid-summer at-bats that saw him flailing away on occasion.

"The biggest difference is that when he's seeing his pitch he's hitting it hard and keeping it fair," Maddon said. "He's not missing it, he's not fouling it off, he's not taking it."

And when he's hitting it, it's often going a long way. No matter how you measure a hot streak, that's a good thing.