The business of baseball washed over Matt Duffy like a tidal wave, casting him adrift. He and his family were left in shock when the

Giants traded him to Tampa Bay last month, and his many fans

found it a strange, inconceivable development.

“All I could think about was having to leave the guys,” Duffy said by telephone this week. “All the people I’d grown close to in the organization, having all that yanked away from you. I was so bummed. Those first few days were the worst.”

Just lately, the healing process has begun — emotionally, if not physically. Duffy continues to have difficulty with a sore left Achilles tendon and is considering the prospect of offseason surgery. But

he’s on the field, at a new position, making a series of adjustments that only a Giants-to-Rays move would demand.

“It was a pretty great thing to see all the outpouring of grief, anger, love, all of that from the fans, just to see how well-liked he was,” said Tom Duffy, who visited his son during the Rays-Astros series in Houston last weekend along with his wife, Cathy, Matt’s sister, Erin, and his uncle, Glenn Larson. “That definitely softened the blow. But in some ways it made it tougher, because this was such an ideal situation for him.”

The Rays are terrible. They play in a ridiculous ballpark. They’re one of only two big-league teams (joining Toronto) to play on turf. And it just wasn’t possible to ship Matt’s beloved cat, Skeeter, off to Tampa Bay with him (the hefty Skeeter, currently weighing in at 26 pounds, is with Duffy’s parents in Long Beach).

Asked to sum up his son’s mood, Tom put it pretty well: “He’s just kickin’ rocks down the road right now.”

A couple of weeks before the deadline, Giants general manager Bobby Evans had what Tom called “kind of a reassurance chat” with Duffy. “But I think the Achilles thing was kind of the tipping point for the Giants,” he said, “and it looks like Christian Arroyo is the main guy (at third base) in their plans. Then they picked up Eduardo Nuñez a few days earlier. And they got a very good starting pitcher (Matt Moore) in the deal. When you think about all that, it actually makes sense.”

Duffy first noticed soreness in the Achilles tendon during spring training, but played on without incident. It doesn’t seem coincidental that he aggravated it in Tampa Bay while running the bases, forcing him onto the disabled list in late June. Returning from a rehabilitation stint, Duffy played five straight games for the Rays before getting two days off as a precaution. He was in the lineup at shortstop Friday night against Toronto after getting what amounted to a three-day break: DH duty, a pinch-hit appearance and an off-day.

“They’re really concerned about pushing him too hard right now,” said Tom. “Everybody gets sore playing on that hard surface there, it’s brutal. You end up using muscles you’re not used to using, and that’s just to walk around.”

An eternal optimist, one of his better qualities, Matt admits to a potentially untenable situation. “It gets sore pretty quickly,” he said. “The Achilles itself is fine, but it’s my heel bone, the way it’s structured, causes some irritation and inflammation. There’s a possibility I’ll have to get that cleaned up after the season. It’s a fairly common procedure; they go in and shave down the heel bone so it doesn’t rub against the Achilles and the bursa sac. I’d prefer not to have to deal with it anymore.

“So I’m dealing with that, as well,” he said. “It’s been a weird year, to say the least.”

Not long after the trade, Duffy heard that Miller, the Rays’ shortstop, wasn’t thrilled about having to move to first base. “That hasn’t been a problem at all,” Matt said. “He’s a really good dude; we’ve actually become pretty close. Chris Archer, a great guy, reached out to me and my family right away. This whole clubhouse is full of good guys who want to win. The infield’s solid. The pitching staff is young but really talented. You can see where this club can get past the growing pains and really do something.

“Now that (the grief) has subsided a little bit, I’ve been able to focus on relearning shortstop, get used to the new surroundings, new teammates, how their personalities kind of jell together, and how I fit in here. I'm not a baseball watcher; I’m a player. When you get back in that environment, you start to feel more at home, and everything falls into place a little bit.”

As Tom told his son, “You get stronger from life lessons like this. Suck it up, rise above the adversity. Look at it as an open door, not a closed one. And he’s doing that. You can’t walk around all gloomy about what you’ve lost. I told him, this is like getting dumped by a girl you really like. The only way it gets better is time, and you find another girl.”

The sight of the Rays’ excellent third baseman, Evan Longoria, calls to mind the remarkable succession of Long Beach State shortstops over the years, from Troy Tulowitzki to Longoria to Duffy. “I’ll tell you an amazing story,” said Tom, remembering a scene from October 2005, when Matt was 14 and playing for Lakewood High. “He was really a small, skinny kid, before he had his growth spurt, and I felt he needed some coaching to get himself in the hunt at Long Beach State. I asked one of their coaches if he could work with Matt, and we wound up going there every Wednesday, at the end of their practice.

“So one day he’s out there taking ground balls, and one of the Dirtbags (the team’s nickname) walks by and stops to watch for a couple of minutes. It’s Evan Longoria, big star on the team, projected top-10 draft pick. He drops his equipment bag, gets his glove, walks out toward Matt and says, ‘Mind if I do some double plays with you?’ It was like a commercial! Veteran guy grabs his glove, smacks it a couple times, and ‘Hey, kid.’ I mean, what are the odds that Matt would start at shortstop there, and wind up in the big leagues playing next to Longoria? I can’t even wrap my head around that.”

This is how the Duffys view things, with perspective and smiles over lives well lived. It serves them well.

Bruce Jenkins is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: bjenkins@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Bruce_Jenkins1