9:38AM Wednesday
March 6, 2013

Chris Leroux lost some velocity and relied on his slider more in 2012 due to his strained pectoral injury.

When I was looking over Chris Leroux's stats for the 2013 Annual, I noticed two red flags in his pitch selection. First, I noticed that he was leaning more on his slider in 2012. In 2010 and 2011 the right-hander threw his fastball around 63% of the time. In 2012, that number dropped down to 41.8%.

The second thing I noticed was that Leroux's fastball velocity dropped. He was averaging around 93-94 MPH in 2010-2011, but dropped to an average of 91.2 in 2012. My initial thought to these two notes was that the velocity drop and the increased use of his slider could have been due to his 2012 injury.

Leroux was hurt in 2012, suffering from a grade two pectoral strain. I asked him today about relying on his slider in 2012, and the drop in velocity. He confirmed that both things were due to the injury. His fastball wasn't as powerful, which forced him to lean on his slider more.

"I relied more on my ot