Add Rays great Evan Longoria to the Junior Caminero fan club

BOSTON — Team officials from principal owner Stuart Sternberg down gathered Saturday in a Steinbrenner Field meeting room to hear the greatest player in their franchise history, Evan Longoria, formally retire as a Ray.

As the formal session was breaking up, Junior Caminero, the team’s current young, rising star third baseman, walked in to pay his respects to the three-time All-Star third baseman in what the Rays can hope was a meeting of past and future greatness.

“I wanted to meet him, shake his hand,” the 21-year-old Caminero said Monday, via team interpreter Eddie Rodriguez.

“That was something really big for me, getting to talk to a legend like that. Not only in Tampa, but everywhere he went he became a legend. For me, it’s something very special, and it’s always going to be a part of me, like a mark in my life.”

Longoria return the plaudits, speaking highly of Caminero and what he could become.

“He’s a pretty, pretty good player,” Longoria said. “I don’t know much about him, other than just seeing him play and how exciting he is, especially at the plate. But I have no doubt that they have the right people to kind of point him in the right direction and make him a complete player.

“The Rays do a good job of developing stars. They’ve always been good at that. They may not be heard of more on the national stage — it’s always kind of been that way, people in the know know, like, man, the Rays have all these young studs that are not being talked about.

“Junior will get talked about plenty. He’s kind of right on the cusp of super stardom.”

Junior Caminero celebrates after his second-inning home run against the Rangers last week at Steinbrenner Field. [ CHRIS O’MEARA | AP ]

Caminero, over the past few weeks, certainly has provided glimpses.

Most notably at the plate, swatting six homers in an eight-game span, and an MLB-most 16 extra-base hits and American League-high 21 RBIs over 17 (with a .324 average and 1.135 OPS). And it’s not all power, as Monday he showed great patience in working a bases-loaded walk with two outs in the 11th inning to put the Rays ahead to stay.

Overall, he went into play Tuesday hitting .256 with a team-leading 15 homers and 41 RBIs, and a .795 OPS.

He’s also impressed in the field, where his hard work at third base has resulted in making routine plays more regularly and highlight one on occasion.

And even on the bases, with Caminero last week helping the Rays win two games with daring dashes home.

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There was an American League co-player of the week in there, the bursting pride of the Rays’ recent Dominican heritage night and the fun of Caminero’s first bobblehead giveaway.

Caminero’s improved play follows one of the roughest stretches of his short time so far in the majors, where he hit .190 with a .520 OPS for nearly a month, including a 1-for-17 skid.

The improvement was somewhat of a team effort.

Caminero sought some comfort in familiar advice from Jorge Mejia, his hitting coach from the Dominican Republic who he brought to Tampa for a few days in late May.

“Whoever it was that came in and adjusted him needs to be handsomely rewarded by somebody,” Rays closer Pete Fairbanks joked.

Caminero and Rays hitting coaches Chad Mottola and Brady North incorporated some of those ideas into the drills they do daily. Manager Kevin Cash sat Caminero twice in a five-day span to allow him time “to reset.”

And Caminero kept working.

“(Mejia) helped a lot — you guys are seeing the results of that,” Caminero said. “But I had to continue to put in the work because regardless of what he told me, or if I don’t put in the work, it’s not going to matter.”

One of the specific adjustments was to stop beating inside sinkers into the ground, resulting in easy outs and too many double plays.

“I tried to eliminate those inside pitches,” Caminero said. “It’s something that is not easy to do, to lay off those pitches, but I’m working on it.”

Junior Caminero entered play Tuesday leading the Rays in home runs (15) and RBIs (41). [ CHRIS O’MEARA | AP ]

Mottola said Caminero’s ability to make that type of adjustment, especially at his age, “is probably the underrated part of it all.”

And a good sign of what’s to come.

“We’ve got to remind ourselves, he’s 21 and still doing some special things,” Mottola said. “We’re going to see some hiccups along the way, just from him learning baseball, learning the pitchers. …

“You struggle to cap anything because he’s at what, 15 homers, and you can’t say he’s at his peak right now for the full three months that we’re in. He’s had a good couple weeks and he’s at 15.

“So what does that mean in five years? You can definitely dream.”

What kind of player could Caminero become?

Ask around the Rays clubhouse who he reminds people of and you hear some interesting and familiar names of heavy hitters.

Bench coach Rodeny Linares suggested, as Caminero agent Rafa Nieves has previously, a similarity to early Miguel Cabrera.

“I joked with him the other day, told him he was ‘Bootleg Miguel Cabrera,’ which is a pretty good comp,” Linares said. “He’s got power to all fields, especially to rightfield. He can hit the ball harder than anybody I’ve ever seen from the right side to the right side.”

Cash ran through names of star players known for hitting the ball hard, such as Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Oneil Cruz and Giancarlo Stanton, settling on Vlad Guerrero Jr., the Toronto star.

“I see the potential to be like Vladdy,” Cash said.

Starter Ryan Pepiot went a little old school, acknowledging the mechanics are obviously different as Caminero doesn’t wag has bat, in suggesting Gary Sheffield.

“The hard swings, keeping the bat path through the zone, making hard contact, I feel like that’s a decent comp,” Pepiot said. “And the controlled viciousness of his swing.”

Junior Caminero gets compared to a lot of former greats. “Hopefully, and God willing, it’s going to be the beginning of a good and stellar career,” he says. [ JEFFEREE WOO | Times ]

Fairbanks took a bigger-picture approach to the question in suggesting Saturday’s guest of honor.

“Hopefully he’s another Longoria-type guy for this organization,” Fairbanks said. “He’s got all the talent in the world. Hopefully he continues to embrace all the stuff that comes with being that talented and continues to do what he’s been doing for a long time.”

That, Caminero said, is the plan.

That what’s he’s done so far is just the start of something.

“Hopefully, and God willing, it’s going to be the beginning of a good and stellar career,” Caminero said. “But at the same time, like we say in the D.R., I cannot just go to sleep on that. I have to continue to work and do my things.

“And hopefully good things are going to continue to happen.”

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