Jayson Werth Says Phillies Could Have Had Him and Cliff Lee
Kyle and I tag-teamed this. The post, that is.
Jayson Werth spoke with the media today at Nationals camp. David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News blog High Cheese has the transcript. You can see it all by clicking on the link, but here are a couple of noteworthy snippets you may find interesting.
On whether the team could have afforded both him and Cliff Lee:
“I think if they would have played it right they would have had us both. I mean, they traded Cliff away for prospects and then realized that was probably not what they should have done."
"They ended up paying him a lot more than they would have if they’d signed him the year before. Then we would have had him. Chances are if they had signed him before they traded him, it probably would have made it a little easier to sign me.”
[Kyle] Oh I'm sorry, do you not like the way the Phillies assembled their pitching rotation? Perhaps you're right on the dollars and cents of it, but you're forgetting the fact that trading away Lee allowed Halladay and Oswalt to be part of the rotation that is going to cutter your ass for the next three to seven years.
The Phillies were never going to sign you for the ridiculous $126 million the Nationals were offering. If they got rid of the contracts of Ryan Howard and Cliff Lee, they still wouldn't have paid you twice what you're worth, Werth.
On whether or not he was shocked when the Phillies signed Lee:
“I kind of knew it was always a possibility and I kind of felt it was going to be one or the other. At that point. When it wasn’t me, and what they were talking to me about in terms of years, it kind of made it seem like they were playing us off against each other a little bit"
[Kyle] They weren't playing you off of anybody, Bro. They offered you a nice three-year deal, reportedly worth less than half of what desperate Washington wanted to pay you.
Werth also commented on Aaron Rowand's World Series ring and, at the end of Murphy's post, you can find out how his new owner's desire to improve the team… um… "turned [him] on"…
Oh and don't worry, Werth isn't getting too big for his baggy britches. He and Bryce Harper only had to be escorted off the field in a golf cart to avoid the autograph crush: [Adam Kilgore]
Today, Bryce Harper was driven off the field in a golf cart, as was Jayson Werth. The golf carts for Jayson Werth and Bryce Harper were to avoid the autograph crush. No injuries at all. Apologies if it seemed otherwise.
Way to go, JW. Hanging with this douche, who is already getting more attention than you and thinks you're the Yankees of the NL East. Good luck with that. And this:
