Jim Bowden Brian Quotations

We were counting on 200 innings from Brian this year.

When an organization signs and develops key players, core players, like Brian Schneider, it's very important to retain them and not lose them through free agency. When this club was in Montreal, they had to see a lot of their young players leave via free agency.

When the organization signs core players like Brian Schneider, I think it's very important to retain them and not lose them through free agency. To be able to come into Washington and to be able to have the revenue to do some of the things we were not able to do when they were the Montreal Expos is very positive for the franchise.

We are very pleased to add a dependable starter such as Brian Lawrence to our rotation. No only does he have a reputation of going deep into games, but he has averaged 34 starts the last four seasons.

Brian is one of the best defensive catchers in baseball and we're glad to be able to keep him in Washington for at least the next four years. It is the goal of any organization to sign, develop and then retain their own homegrown players, and this is what we've accomplished with Brian's contract.

Brian continues to be one of the best defensive catchers in the game, shutting the running game down. Offensively, his on-base percentage and slugging percentage continue to improve every single year. His strikeouts continue to be reduced every year.

It's a big setback. We were counting on 200 innings from Brian this year. We were hoping those three-hit shutouts he threw in September were going to be thrown in our ballpark.

I don't talk about contract negotiations through the media. I didn't do that with Nick Johnson or Brian Schneider.