Roark aiming to solidify role as starter

For young pitchers trying to make it into a team's starting rotation, there are two goals: make the rotation and stay in it. Last year, Tanner Roark accomplished the first goal. Now comes the second one. "Somebody can always come in and prove themselves and do better than me," Roark said. "That's what I've got to prove to myself, prove each year that I can be a starter and can still pitch at the big league level. That's my mentality and that'll always be my mentality." For Roark, he hopes 2015 will be a season of progression. The Nats starter is coming off his most demanding campaign, a season in which he logged 31 starts and finished just shy of 200 innings pitched. That's a far cry from the 53 innings pitched as a reliever in 2013, and a shift that saw Roark slide into one of the toughest and deepest starting rotations in baseball. Still, the right-hander answered the challenge. His 15 wins were second on the team behind Doug Fister, highlighted by a 3-1 record in September. "I still felt great after the season was over," Roark said of the added workload. "(My) arm felt great and I still felt like I could keep going. I've never gone that many innings before in my career, but it was good to test myself physically and mentally." That test will be even tougher this season. The Nats lost Ross Detwiler in a trade to Texas, but the team is still rich with pitching talent, both in the starting rotation and bullpen. Along with Roark, the arsenal of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Fister and Gio Gonzalez guided the Nationals to their second division title in three years. Still, despite the recent success in the regular season, the Nats have watched their magical run end far too quickly in the postseason. Their window is still open to capture a championship, but the clock is ticking. "Not every team can have the perfect set to where everyone has multiple years with big contract guys, so it is what it is," Roark said. "We're still a team, we're still going to compete and we're going to go out there and play as hard as we can each day."