Before he returned to the Washington Nationals for a fourth season as the club’s Hitting Coach under manager Davey Martinez, Kevin Long looked around the league last winter for the sort of multi-year deal he’d signed in previous years.
“There were discussions going on and we were talking about — my contract had expired, and I haven’t had less than a three-year deal in a long, long time,” Long explained last March, “so that’s what I was looking for, and those weren’t out there, and it wasn’t something that I had to make a decision about.