Jayson Werth: Phillies Could Have Kept Me, Cliff Lee

New Nationals slugger Jayson Werth insists he's moving on from his days with the Philadelphia Phillies, but the outfielder claims his old team could have kept him and ace left-hander Cliff Lee.

"I think if (the front office) would have played it right they would have had us both," Werth told the Philadelphia Daily News. "I mean, they traded Cliff away for prospects (after the 2009 season) and then realized that was probably not what they should have done.

"They ended up paying him a lot more (five years, $120 million) 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."

It's hard to say how accurate Werth's claims are. One of the big reasons the Phillies gave for trading away Lee at the time was because Roy Halladay's contract demands weren't nearly as steep. Halladay ended up signing a three-year, $60 million extension with Philadelphia after the Lee trade -- a deal which is well below what Lee got from the Phillies on the open market this past winter.

Werth said once he heard the Phillies were pursuing Lee as well as trying to retain him this winter, it became an either-or proposition.

"I kind of felt it was going to be one or the other," Werth told the New. "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 against each other a little bit.

"That's the name of the game. That's the business of it. You miss on one, you get on the other. That's how they played it. Unfortunately, I think if they'd played it right, they probably could have had us both."

Werth, for his part, seems unapologetic about what he was after in free agency -- dollars.

"When you make it to free agency, you can look at it one of two ways," he said. "You can look at it as you're a member of the MLB Players' Association or you can look at it as you play for a specific team. I was trying to maximize things."

And maximize things he did, signing a seven-year, $126 million deal with the Nationals on the eve of the Winter Meetings in December.

Werth can provide other reasons for why he is no longer with the Phillies, and in any negotiation there are always an array of factors to consider. Still, it's awfully hard to ignore that pay day.Perhaps the Phillies could have done things differently, but that doesn't mean their reversal on Lee is the biggest reason why Werth will be playing right field in Washington this year.