smitty wrote:Plus we have some guys in the best shape of their lives.

"People have the right to change their mind," Lidge said after the Nationals held their first official workout Tuesday. "They did that and I respect the front office. They've been nothing but unbelievable in my time there and it's a first-class organization, so I don't really have anything bad to say. I just wish they had been more honest early, so I would have known that I couldn't count on them later in the process."

............

"I wanted to see if I had any chance to close somewhere else," he said. "When I realized I didn't, I was coming back to the Phillies. Right after New Year's, I said [to agent Rex Gary], 'Let's go back to Philadelphia for sure.' At some point in mid-January, we said, 'Let's talk about what we want to do.' They said, 'We've got nothing.' That was unexpected.

"They initially said that they'd be crazy not to have me back and it looked like it was going to happen. They didn't make an official offer or anything, but they had talked about numbers a little bit and we kind of knew where they were, and they said they wanted me back at that, and I was comfortable with it."

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said the Phillies could not afford to wait for Lidge to make a decision.

"We talked about a modest deal early," Amaro said. "At the time, it wasn't something they wanted to do, so we moved in a different direction."

Five days after Lidge signed with Washington, the Phillies signed his former Houston Astros teammate Chad Qualls to a one-year deal worth $1.15 million plus incentives. Qualls, 33, is two years younger than Lidge and has been far more durable in recent years. But he never dropped to his knees and looked skyward after recording the final out of the World Series.

Lidge insisted the Qualls signing did not bother him.

"It didn't because Ruben was honest with me about the injury risk being too big," Lidge said. "He said, 'We might make another move to get somebody who is not an injury risk.' I like Chad Qualls a lot and the one thing I know about him is he's not an injury risk.

"If I'm going to leave and they're going to get anybody, I'm glad it's Chad Qualls. I'm friends with him and he's a workhorse. If they had gotten somebody who was an injury risk, then it would have stung."

Grotewold wrote:Howard about to take some BP