"Those guys are pushing earlier than normal, and you can tell they've all got a lot of pride in the teams and countries they're going to be playing for and they really want to present themselves well, and I think we saw a little byproduct of that today," manager Buck Showalter said Sunday.
Castillo and Machado will leave this Sunday to play for the Dominican Republic. Left-handed pitcher Vidal Nuno also leaves Sunday for Team Mexico. Jones and right-handed pitcher Mychal Givens leave a week from now to play for Team USA.
Givens, who threw a scoreless inning in his first game on Friday against Detroit, is getting pumped about pitching for his country.