Werth is determined, not bitter

WASHINGTON — Let’s not get it twisted, Jayson Werth is not bitter. Who gets bitter about signing a $126 million, no-trade contract? In this economy and with the unemployment rate near 10 percent, Werth can work for seven more years before cashing out. In fact, with the right money manager, Werth’s young children can retire, too.

Bitter? C’mon… he’s not stupid. Early on during the 2010 season Werth told us he was going to test the free-agent market and go for the best deal out there and that’s exactly what he did. Werth wanted to get paid like his former teammates Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Roy Halladay and the rest of the players on the Phillies who were taken care of by management. Instead, he had to go somewhere else for that big contract.

The Phillies reportedly had just a three-year deal worth $16 million per season for him when Werth hit the open market.

Nevertheless, Werth is also a pretty competitive dude. No one gets to the big leagues and slugs 13 postseason home runs by accident or by tricking people. Moreover, not many ballplayers accomplish what Werth has so soon after his career was nearly over.

So if you want to know what this is all about, it’s the injury. It’s the sitting at home during the 2006 season with nobody knocking at the door or ringing the phone. It’s about the misdiagnosis of a wrist injury that forced Werth out of desperation to trudge up to Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic with one last chance to save his career. A person can almost hear music in Werth’s voice when he describes how specialist Dr. Richard Berger figured out the injury was a ulnotriquetral ligament split.

He hasn’t been the same since.

Yes, that’s why Werth took the seven years from lowly Washington instead of the three from Philadelphia.

“A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this,” Werth said. “Obviously the years were important to me. The chance to come to a city, guaranteed to be here for a long time, the no-trade was a big deal for me. I have a chance to set my family up for years to come here.”

It’s hard to fault a guy for thinking like that. However, Werth is not without his pride. Baseball is his job for goshsakes. Sure it’s fun and a remarkable way to make an obscene amount of money, but Werth isn’t messing around out there. He wants to perform well, win games and celebrate at the end of the season. Looking for examples? OK, how about when he hit that home run against the Yankees in the World Series at the Bank, slammed his bat down and yelled into the Phillies’ dugout?

Or what about Game 4 of the 2008 World Series when Werth hit a homer in the eighth inning and circled the bases with a fist in the air. He looked as if he could feel the championship ring being placed on his finger right then. Of course there was that incident with the kid and his father in right field last year, too… didn’t they know Werth thought he could stretch into the stands beyond his reach to catch a foul ball? Didn’t they know ballplayers use those types of words when things don’t go their way?

If anything, the pride aspect of Werth’s personality is what makes the move to Washington puzzling even when factoring in the $126 million. That’s especially so when listening to him speak on Wednesday afternoon at his new ballpark.

“I’ve been in the postseason a lot the last couple of years,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. That’s what you play for. That’s what you work out for. That's what you get to spring training early for. I hate to lose. I’m here to win.”

That task didn’t seem so daunting when Werth first signed the deal. After all, the Phillies were basically the same team that fell short in 2010 minus their everyday right fielder. Then the Cliff Lee thing happened and everything changed.

“They got their boy back, I guess,” Werth said. 

Yes they did and it wasn’t Jayson Werth. Instead he was allowed to run off much like Aaron Rowand, a player who signed with San Francisco for a lot of years and a lot of dollars because the view from management was that his stats were enhanced by Citizens Bank Park and the Phillies’ lineup. Maybe that’s where the twinge of bitterness might come in for Werth.

No, he wasn’t double-crossed, but he wasn’t really needed, either.

That’s not the case in Washington, though. Instead, GM Mike Rizzo submitted on nearly every point to Werth and his agent Scott Boras. From the Nats, Werth got big money, a huge length of the contract and a no-trade clause on top of it all with promises of more players to come. Actually, the undercurrent from the Nats’ view was that Werth was the first one onboard and the one who gives them credibility with other potential ballplayers.

That’s the sense “No Discounts” Boras gets, too.

“When Jayson signed, the first thing (players) all asked me was, ‘Oh, so Washington's stepping up? They’re taking those steps? They’re looking to win now?’” Boras said. “In the player community, when you gain that kind of street credit, you have taken a huge step as far as what players will look at your organization, and how they’ll look at it differently.”

It’s not going to happen overnight, though, but Werth hammered home the theme that promises were made.

“The thing about this team is, I think there's some pieces of the puzzle that could be put together and make this team a winner,” Werth said. “I was assured by the Lerner family and Mike Rizzo that they’re going to take steps needed to go get those players and fill the roster accordingly—not with just anybody, but the right-talented guy and the right mix, the person that will make the clubhouse a good place. That was important to me, and that was one of the things that led me to sign here.”

No, that doesn’t sound like a bitter guy at all. Actually, it sounds like a guy with a lot of pride and a hunger to lift the Nats to the top of the standings.

“He doesn’t like losing. I certainly don’t like losing,” Rizzo said. “My job is to put a winner on the field, and we’re hell-bent on doing that.”

It’s not going to be easy, though. After all, Jayson Werth can’t pitch.

Nationals go familiar route, but can Werth lead the way?

Stick around baseball long enough and you’re bound to hear something new every once in a while. That is the beauty of it, after all. Nothing stays the same, which is good because it chases away the boredom. Still, it was a remarkable thing to hear some of things Roy Halladay said just about a year ago.

“This is where we wanted to be,” Halladay said during last December’s introductory press conference at Citizens Bank Park. “It was an easy decision for me.”

Halladay just didn’t say it that one time either. Oh yes, the big right-hander made it point to drive home his point that more than anywhere else, he wanted to be in Philadelphia.

My, how far we have come.

“He did say that his was the place where he wanted to be,” general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. pointed out the day the Halladay trade went down. “A player of his caliber saying that? I’m not sure [if that’s happened].”

Remember how it used to be, though? Ballplayers used to go out of their way to avoid our fair city. Some even had it written into their contracts that they could be traded anywhere in the world as long as it wasn’t to Philadelphia. Then there was J.D. Drew and Scott Rolen, for whatever reasons, needed to play anywhere else. In fact, with Rolen it was turned into something personal instead of what it really was…

He was sick of losing.

But even Rolen admitted that in order for the Phillies to get to the level they enjoy now where players like Roy Halladay beg to be sent here, he was the one who had to go. See, before the 2002 season then general manager Ed Wade reportedly offered Rolen a deal that he would still be playing out. Oh sure, with Rolen at third base and healthy, the Phillies never would have had David Bell, Wes Helms, Abraham Nunez, Pedro Feliz or Placido Polanco. Chances are they would be trying to find someone take the last few years of the 10-year, $140 million that was said to be offered.

See, it was OK that the Phillies had a veritable revolving door at third base because that meant players had changed their minds about going to Philadelphia. Plus, 10-year contract aside, if Rolen had taken the deal, he said.

“If I would have stayed there, there was no way they would have gotten Thome,” Rolen told me during a conversation at old Yankee Stadium in 2003. “They might have been able to get [Kevin] Millwood, but there's no way they would have been able to have Thome and me on the same team.”

Jim Thome was the linchpin. Without Thome there is no Cliff Lee or Pedro Martinez. Without Cliff Lee there is no Roy Halladay. Without Rolen, Bobby Abreu and those not-quite-ready ball players, the Phillies don’t get the draft picks for Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell or Ryan Howard.

Still, it was Thome who made all the difference… Thome and that crazy six-year deal worth $85 million that just came off the books last year.

“We needed to do something at the time,” Rollins said. “He brought excitement back to Philly baseball.”

More than that, Thome was the secret to the formula. Getting the future Hall of Famer to agree to a six-year deal even though he would have preferred to stay in Cleveland sent a message to the rest of baseball that the Phillies were serious about being serious. Sure, it might have been the best contract, but that $85 million looks pretty cheap these days.

“At that point he was the most-coveted and the best player during the off-season and we really made a push to get him to Philadelphia,” Amaro said last December. “I really believe, honestly, that put us over the hump.”

Yes, getting that one player can have a trickle-down effect. It’s like a snowball that rolls downhill and turns into a runaway behemoth by the time it gets to the bottom.

“He came at kind of the right time for all our kids," Amaro said. “The Rollinses and Utleys and those guys weren’t quite coming into their prime and we’re fortunate to have those guys, with Ryan Howard, step up and come into their own. … All those guys didn’t get to their primes until after Jimmy was gone, but he certainly helped legitimize what we were trying to do.”

So is that what the Washington Nationals are attempting to do with Jayson Werth? No doubt the seven years and $126 million makes the Thome deal look like tip money, but is Werth the kind of guy a team uses to draw the others to town?

That is the $126 million question.

Let’s get it out of the way right here… Jayson Werth is no Jim Thome. Not even close. Sure, Werth is popular with the stat geeks and is certainly a better fielder than Thome was, but as far as the whole package goes, no, not in the same ballpark. Thome is revered by teammates, coaches and the press. He is a leader whose words carry weight in the clubhouse. Werth is an acquired taste. Sure, he’s a tireless worker and has a lot of friends in the clubhouse, but in certain circles he can be merely tolerated.

Jayson Werth is a piece teams like the Phillies add, not a centerpiece to be built around like the Nationals say they are going to do.

“He’ll be a centerpiece of our ballclub on the field and in the clubhouse,” Nats GM Mike Rizzo said to The Washington Post. “It kind of exemplifies Phase 2 of the Washington Nationals’ process. Phase 1 was a scouting-and-player development, build-the-farm-system type of program. We feel that we’re well on our way of doing that. We feel that now, it's the time to go to this second phase and really compete for division titles and championships.”

Rizzo isn’t laying out an unfamiliar program. In fact, it is the program to build a winning team. It’s the same one the Phillies relied on many times in their history, like when they got Thome or Pete Rose before the 1979 season. Not only were they deals that resonated in terms of the finances (Rose got $3.2 million for four years), but they changed the way everyone saw the franchise.

They changed the culture of the organization.

Werth is doing that in Washington, but he’s not going to be able to do it all by himself. Ryan Zimmerman will be by Werth’s side until at least 2013, and ace of the future Stephen Strasburg should be recovered from Tommy John surgery in time for the 2012 season. The ETA on last summer’s top pick of the draft, Bryce Harper, could be 2012, too. But there are still many question marks that go with prospects. If Werth is going to be what the Nats expect, the Lerner family (owners of the club) need to spend some more cash.

Werth’s close friend Cliff Lee would be a good place to start.

“I think in a short time, we’re going to surprise a lot of people,” Werth told The Washington Post. “I’ve been given a lot of assurance by the Lerner family and by Mike that we’re going to go after some guys that are going to make a difference, that are going to put this team where it needs to be. . . . I came here to win.”

Hey, maybe Werth is the man to build a club around. Why not? He's a young 31, a former first-round pick who has been to the top of the game with the Phillies and nearly quit a few years ago when he was unsure if his injuries would clear up. He's from a baseball family in which his grandfather and uncle spent a combined 33 years in the majors, and his dad played 11 pro seasons with a cup of coffee with the Yankees and Royals in the early 1980s. Yes, Werth has a baseball education, but can he pass it on?

Give Rizzo, the Lerners and the Nats credit for taking big risks. After all, there is a chance Strasburg never comes back at all and playing in a city that is rather ambivalent about its third crack at a big league franchise, the future of the team very well could be on the precipice.

Think about it… Washington is a two-time loser in baseball, yet when the Expos where no longer right for Montreal, MLB insisted on giving the city a third shot. Worse, they stuck it to the overburdened taxpayers of D.C. and forced them to build a ballpark that no one goes to. So yes, there is plenty of culture to change for Werth and his young sidekicks.

The future of the team could depend on it because Washington could be a three-time loser with baseball with a guarantee that there will not be a fourth chance.

Nats pay what others wouldn't to ink Werth

To properly understand the deal that sent Jayson Werth to the lowly Washington Nationals after spending the past five of his last six seasons in the playoffs, there is only one number that matters.

Seven.

That’s seven years with $126 million tied to it for a player who has been in one All-Star Game as an injury substitute and played just two seasons as an everyday player. In fact, it wasn’t until veteran Geoff Jenkins got injured that Werth finally got a shot to be the starting right fielder for the Phillies.

Now, he’s the centerpiece of the Nationals' offense after the team’s brass decided to let slugger Adam Dunn take a four-year, $56 million deal with the Chicago White Sox. Dunn, in comparison, has belted at least 38 home runs and driven in 92 RBIs for seven straight seasons. Moreover, Dunn is a 10-year vet who is actually younger than Werth.

So just what is it that general manager Mike Rizzo and the Nationals are trying to do? Or, is this the type of deal that solidifies Scott Boras as the agent most able to deliver the bottom line? More importantly, what’s the difference between a three year deal worth $16 million per season like the one CSNPhilly’s Jim Salisbury reported, and the $18 million Werth will get from the Nationals?

Surely those playoff shares make up the difference along with the idea of building a legacy as one of the few men to help the Phillies win the World Series.

Still, $126 million for seven years. Seven years!

“It is an elite player,” Rizzo said at a news conference from the Winter Meetings in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. “Elite players get a lot of money.”

In that regard, Werth and Rizzo are both shortsighted. After all, Werth isn’t exactly an elite player. At least he is not compared to Matt Holliday, whose contract with the Cardinals served as a model for the one Boras and Werth sought. Sure, Werth had strong numbers in categories favored by devotees to advanced metrics, posting a .921 OPS, .532 slugging percentage, .296 batting average and led the league with 46 doubles. But those numbers seemed to ring hollow. In 2010, Werth was incredibly streaky and certainly benefitted from batting behind Ryan Howard in the Phillies’ lineup.

Despite a favorable spot in the batting order, Werth hit a league-worst .186 with runners in scoring position and .136 with runners in scoring position and two outs. As a result, Werth was the poster boy of a July slump that saw the Phillies sink to 48-46 and fire hitting coach Milt Thompson. During a four-game series in Chicago to start the second half, Werth went 2-for-14 with nine strikeouts. He whiffed without even moving the bat off his shoulder in five of his first seven hitless at-bats.

Regardless, who would have thought Werth would be in this position when general manager Pat Gillick plunked him off the scrap heap before the 2007 season? When Gillick signed him in December of 2006, it was a move that slipped under the radar. The acquisitions of Abraham Nunez and Wes Helms rightfully made more news that winter.

Werth did nothing to change that in 2007 when he nursed injuries and appeared in just 94 games after missing all of 2006. Shane Victorino, a former teammate of Werth’s with the Dodgers and Phillies, remembered talking to Werth during his season spent adrift where the talk was about giving up.

“I remember him calling me in 2006 and telling, ‘Hey, I’m on a boat and I’m battling my wrist injury and it hasn’t gotten better and I don’t know if I’ll ever play again.’ He said that. That’s crazy,” Victorino said. “He was so frustrated with his wrist injury that he doubted it would ever get better. And now to see where he is today, I’m happy for the guy. I’m overly happy for the guy. Whatever he goes out and gets he deserves.”

Of course, that’s the player in Victorino talking. Rival general managers around the league are undoubtedly shaking their heads at the Nationals’ largesse. According to the Newark Star-Ledger, new Mets GM Sandy Alderson scoffed at the announcement.

“It makes some of our contracts look pretty good,” Alderson said. “That's a long time and a lot of money. I thought they were trying to reduce the deficit in Washington.”

Moreover, deep-pocketed teams like the Yankees and Red Sox quickly backed away from pursuit of Werth when they learned what he and Boras were after.

Perhaps it was postseason abilities that got Werth the big cheese? After all, in 2008 Werth was so good during the playoffs the Phillies let Pat Burrell walk away because they had a capable right-handed bat to put in the lineup behind Howard and Utley.

 Then, when doubters wondered if he could handle the rigors of playing the full slate of games in 2009, he belted 36 homers, got 99 RBIs and made the All-Star team.

“When he first came here, he came here with a lot of talent. Pat Gillick always liked him, and he definitely was the one that kind of like wanted him and kind of persuaded him to like to come with us,” manager Charlie Manuel said. “It took him a while to really, I think, adjust to our team and really kind of get things going. I think that he was like he needed to play. He hadn't played in like a year, year and a half or something. And once he got started, he earned a spot and he actually beat Geoff Jenkins out of right field. He earned a spot to play, and he definitely enjoys playing here. He’s been a solid player for us, and he's got a ton of ability.”

Certainly postseason ability probably won’t matter in 2011 since Werth is joining a young team that rated in the bottom half in the league of every offensive category and just allowed a younger, perennial 40-homer slugger walk away. Worse, Werth joins a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2003, when it was playing in Montreal, in a city that has not fielded a baseball team with a winning record since 1969.

The last World Series played in Washington, D.C. was 1933 when the first version of the Senators lost to the New York Giants. The city had a winner in 1924 when Walter Johnson came on in relief to beat the Giants in 12 innings of Game 7.

Then again, a lot can change in seven years. Back when the Phillies were battling mediocrity, it took a six-year, $86 million deal to Jim Thome to get folks to take them seriously. Plus, with phenom pitcher Stephen Strasburg expected to return from Tommy John surgery in 2012, a season that could be the arrival time for 2010 No. 1 draft pick Bryce Harper, the Nats could be building toward something.

Whether they get there with Werth, of course, is the big question.