Roark and Murphy still beaming after WBC experience

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Tanner Roark and Daniel Murphy rejoined the Nationals this morning, each still basking in the glow of their experience playing for the gold-medal-winning Team USA in the World Baseball Classic and each confident he'll be ready for the start of the regular season.

The WBC experience differed between the two, with Roark pitching four scoreless innings in Tuesday's semifinal victory over Japan while Murphy rode the bench for nearly the entire tournament. Neither expressed any regrets or concerns, though, about their usage by USA manager Jim Leyland and insisted it didn't prevent them from preparing as they wanted to this spring.

"No, I treated it the same way I would the regular season: Show up to the ballpark ready to play every single day," Murphy said. "And if you're in the lineup, be prepared. And if you're not, you be prepared if your name is called in the middle of the game. I tried to prepare myself accordingly every single day as if I was going to play, and if I didn't, to be ready possibly for a pinch-hit at-bat."

Murphy wound up appearing in only two of Team USA's eight WBC games, going 0-for-6 at the plate. He already had been struggling to find his hitting stroke before leaving Nationals camp on March 5, leaving manager Dusty Baker concerned the last two weeks about the man who hit .347 last season and finished runner-up for the National League MVP award.

After a long flight back from Los Angeles on Thursday, Murphy decided only to work out today. He'll be in the lineup tomorrow when the Nationals face the Astros, then build his workload back up over the final week of spring training.

"I went like two or three spring trainings with the Mets where I had like 15 (at-bats)," he said. "This isn't new."

Murphy indeed has seen limited Grapefruit League action in the past, with only 10 at-bats in 2013 and 17 in 2015. He went on to hit .286 for the Mets in 2013, then .281 in 2015 in advance of his dominant postseason.

The 31-year-old second baseman said he worked extensively both in the cage and in the infield while at the WBC and spent a good amount of his time on the bench during games talking about hitting approaches for specific situations with teammates.

"I was able to take a lot of ground balls," he said. "Talked with Ian Kinsler quite a bit about defense, which was really cool because I know what a great defender he is. So I picked his brain a lot. Paul Goldschmidt and I spent a lot of time together kind of talking about what we would do offensively from an approach on certain guys. ... There was a lot of great conversations."

Murphy described the scene inside Marlins Park for a first-round game against the Dominican Republic and then the final rounds at Dodger Stadium as being comparable to postseason play. Roark concurred, calling the March 11 game he pitched against the Dominicans in Miami "by far the loudest game I've ever been a part of."

Roark pitched out of the bullpen that night, entering in a mid-inning jam. He struggled to get out of the inning unscathed, but he emerged believing the experience was beneficial.

"Although I didn't myself pitch the way I wanted to in the Dominican game, I think it will make me better because of how loud it was," he said. "I've been through the experience, and not really succeeding at what I was supposed to be doing. It'll prepare me for games from here on out."

The 30-year-old right-hander originally was slated to rejoin the Nationals after the first-round pool in Miami but elected instead to stay with the American team through the rest of the tournament.

"I was told I was going to get one start, and I wanted to start, for sure," he said. "And also if I'm asked to be on a team to play, I want to stay with the team. Fortunately it was all three rounds to win the gold, which is amazing to be a part of. It really factored into it."

The payoff came in Tuesday night's semifinal against Japan, when Roark got the start and pitched four scoreless innings on 48 pitches. He said he could have and would have kept going, but Nationals pitching coach Mike Maddux had given strict instructions not to surpass the 50-pitch threshold.

The secret to his success against a Japanese lineup he had never faced before?

"Everybody around me helped to calm me down," he said. "I think the Dominican game helped me relax a lot more, too. Just to breathe. If you don't breathe, you die. It's crazy, but it's true if you think about it. If you get up there and you don't breathe normally, you can't focus. You can't do all the right stuff. That's what helped out."

Roark is slated to make two more Grapefruit League starts to build up his pitch count. He said he's pitching Saturday, though he may have been mistaken because that would only be three days' rest since his start in Los Angeles and would throw off his schedule to start the Nationals' second game of the regular season.

Whatever ends up being the case, Roark said he'll cherish the two weeks he got to spend as part of a gold-medal-winning national club.

"I've never been a part of anything like that before," he said. "I've never been an All-Star. I've never been anything like that before. Everybody on that team was a superstar. Every hitter's a three-hole hitter, a four-hole hitter, with the exception of some guys who are leadoff hitters. It was incredible to be part of the experience. ... I would do it again in a heartbeat."