Nationals all-star pitchers Stephen Strasburg and Gio Gonzalez couldn’t be more different

On the days Gio Gonzalez starts, he blares Motown music throughout the Washington Nationals clubhouse, flits around the room and chatters at teammates, reporters, broadcasters, anyone who will listen. He grew up in Miami and became a professional out of high school. He is a left-hander, a curveball maestro and an unrepentant goofball. ¶ On the days Stephen Strasburg starts, he arrives later than most teammates and glowers in almost total silence, rarely leaving the small circumference around his locker. He grew up in San Diego and went to college for three years. He is a right-hander, the hardest-throwing starter in the league and a natural introvert. ¶ “One’s a butterfly traveling at 150” mph, pitching coach Steve McCatty said. “And the other one’s a plodder on that straight course.” ¶ Strasburg and Gonzalez are both all-stars. Tuesday night in Kansas City they will stand next to each other, lined up among the best players on the planet, and represent the Nationals, the team they have lifted to the best record in the National League midway through their first season together. ¶ For the odd couple at the top of the Nationals’ rotation, it is only the beginning. Strasburg cannot become a free agent until after the 2016 season, and Gonzalez signed a contract extension that could keep him here through 2018. They will grow into the prime of their careers in Washington. ¶ Here may be the oddest thing about the odd couple: They really, truly like each other. Strasburg, 23, and Gonzalez, 26, get along not despite their differences, but because of them.

“Opposites attract, right?” Gonzalez said. “I think that’s how we click so well. I kind of like to kick back a little bit and enjoy some of the moments, where he’s always trying to get better and better and better. I want that guy by my side, because he’s going to push me to get better. To me, that’s why he’s our number one.”

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Strasburg said most of his friends back home are like Gonzalez. “He does all the talking for me,” Strasburg said with a slight grin. Gonzalez was a chatterbox from the moment he walked into the Nationals’ clubhouse in spring training.

“Three or four days after I first met him, I said, ‘Do you go home and ice your vocal cords at night?’” starter Jordan Zimmermann said.

When he met Strasburg, Zimmermann said, only half jokingly, “Oh, yeah, we didn’t talk for about a month and a half.”

Drawing out Strasburg

Inside the clubhouse, teammates have noticed Strasburg thaw in his first full season and start to show his sharp wit. “He’s joking around more,” Zimmermann said. “Even last year at the end of the year, he would sit in his locker and not really say much.”

Gonzalez has tried to draw out Strasburg’s personality. Strasburg’s focus helps make him who he is on the mound; teammate Jayson Werth described him earlier this year as “a killer.” But McCatty has also spoken with him about trying to enjoy the game more. “I don’t know if the right word is ‘enjoy,’ ” McCatty said. “It doesn’t cross my mind when he’s out there.”