Nats Nightly: Daniel Murphy leads Nationals to 4-3 win over Phillies

Daniel Murphy's 3 for 4 game on Monday night in Philadelphia, which saw him hit a leadoff double in the second, a solo home run in the fourth and a go-ahead two-run single in the eighth, left him with a .395/.426/.621 line, 15 doubles, eight home runs and 33 runs driven in on the year, 49 games into his first season with the Washington Nationals.

Murphy set a franchise record for hits in a calendar month when he collected his 41st hit in May on Saturday night, and he entered play on Monday with 42 hits in 105 at bats (.400 AVG) since the start of the season's second month.

He also led the majors with a .387 AVG before last night, multi-hit games, with 24, now 25, and he had hits in 25 of his previous 29 games played.

After watching Murphy collect three hits and drive in three runs in the 4-3 win over the Phillies, Nationals' skipper Dusty Baker talked about just how important the 31-year-old second baseman has been for the Nationals two months into the first year of his 3-year/$37.5M free agent deal, when a reporter asked where Washington would be without him.

"We wouldn't be close," Baker said, "especially offensively -- you don't know who else we would have had, but he certainly couldn't have been any better than Daniel Murphy.

"Murph, man, I mean, he's been great since we put him in that -- he's been great all over really and he just keeps doing his thing and we're going to help him keep doing his thing. So we're just glad we have him. He's an outstanding citizen, good man and a heck of a ballplayer."

While it's unlikely Murphy will continue to hit close to .400 throughout the 2016 campaign, Baker said he didn't have any sort of expectations for how things will go.

"I don't know, I'm different," he explained. "I don't expect anything out of the guys, really. What good [are] expectations when they've got to go play and go do it. So, it's like, I don't expect anything.

I just expect them to give me what they've got every day and give me their best.

"And Murph has given me his best, plus some. So instead of worrying about when it's going to stop, I just, just give me some more and keep it going and it's up to me to try keep him strong and in the right frame of mind to go out there and play.

"And right now, he's not thinking about hitting .400, he's not thinking about anything other than the simplest form, each [at] bat, each inning at a time. You start worrying about stuff way out there and man, that inhibits what you've got to do today."

And once each day is over and each game is in the books, it's on to the next one.

Baker has talked recently about his goal of winning fifteen games a month, which the Nationals did in April (16-7) and have now done in May (15-14).

"I think it gives you some motivation and drive to achieve something," Baker said of the goal of winning 15 a month.

"Because in baseball if you just always look at the big picture in things and the big picture seems like it's way down the road.

"We were told to break it down in series, like, 'I want six hits a series.' You know what I mean? Or, 'I want so many hits this month,' whatever it is because it makes it easier to see a reachable goal at that time."

Now that they have their 15 in May?

"Now we've got to get sixteen," he said. "Cause we had 16 in April, in a short month and so we've got a chance to get 16 now."

• We talked about Murphy's big night, Tanner Roark's start, Hellickson vs Harper and more on Nats Nightly after the game:

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