The first meeting comes Tuesday in Washington when the teams open a three-game series.
"When you've shared the same field with a guy and gone through different things . . . I mean, we won a World Series together," Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard said. "To see him in a different uniform, playing against you now, yeah, it's definitely going to be weird."
The 543 games and 2,114 plate appearances in four seasons with the Phillies made Werth a star and a rich man. He has batted second for the Nationals to start 2011 and is 7 for 35 (.200) with a .333 on-base percentage in the season's first nine games.
But with the franchise's cornerstone - third baseman Ryan Zimmerman - placed Monday on the 15-day disabled list with a strained abdominal muscle, Werth will move down in the lineup. For the first time in his career, he will be asked to carry an entire team's offense.
The task begins at Nationals Park against the Phillies, who will bring busloads of fans down Interstate 95, in a series that will provide the best barometer on the differences between the teams.
Changing the culture in Washington will take time, but Werth says he likes the challenge of the Phillies as the measuring stick.
"That was one of the things I was happy about, staying in the division, being able to play Philly for better or for worse, play against those guys," Werth told reporters in New York over the weekend. "It's not like I felt like I was leaving never to be seen again."
For sure, he has not. Victorino said he has traded text messages regularly with Werth. At the start of the season, Werth sent a message wishing Victorino and the team good luck. When Victorino injured his left calf in the second game of the season, he had a message waiting from Werth asking, "How serious?"
