Strasburg shutdown? Not exactly (video)

• Nationals ace is an avid video gamer, playing "Call of Duty" and others with teammates
• Strasburg visited game developer on a trip to Los Angeles for preview
• He takes his game console on the road

Intangibles often drive team success. In the case of the Washington Nationals, one of those intangibles could be the video game Call of Duty.

All-Star pitcher Stephen Strasburg and several members of the team including closer Drew Storen, slugger Michael Morse and catcher Jesus Flores played Call of Duty: Black Ops during the offseason as a way to keep in touch. "It became a whole competition within the team itself," Strasburg says. "We pretty much build our offseason workout program around playing video games."

A diehard online gamer, the 24-year-old right-hander takes his Sony PlayStation 3 on Nationals road trips and also keeps up with former teammates from high school, college and other teams, including Detroit Tigers pitcher Collin Balester, a former National, for instance.

"I play quite a bit on the road," Strasburg says. "There's not much to do in the city, especially when you go to some of these hotels. When you go out you get bombarded for autographs and whatnot. So it's kind of nice to kick back, shut the blinds in your hotel room and just play some Call of Duty before you have to go to the field."

Strasburg is so into Call of Duty that he visited the game's developer Treyarch in late April when the team was in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers to get a sneak peek at Black Ops II, due out Nov. 13. Last week, the studio brought the latest build of the multiplayer game to the D.C. area for Strasburg to test drive.

How much all that online competition in the offseason figured into the Nationals success can't be known. But, Strasburg says, "the one thing that separates us from a lot of other teams in the league is that we have great team chemistry. The older guys look out for the younger guys like myself."

After securing a National League East Division title and the best overall record in the league, the team was "definitely at an all-time high," says Strasburg, who was shut down for the season in early September for precautionary reasons. "The great thing about this team is that we are built for the long run so I don't think we are going to be out there competing in the playoffs for one year. That's going to be our goal to be there every year."