Leroux looking for another chance

Revue de Web

By Alexis Brudnicki, Canadian Baseball Network, July 8, 2014

Buffalo, NY – Chris Leroux is just hoping for another shot.

The 30-year-old was signed by the New York Yankees in January after a winter of pitching for Leones del Escogido in the Dominican Republic. Inked as a starter, Leroux began the season with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and got two games under his belt before a call up to Yankee Stadium.

But in the Bronx, things didn’t exactly go as planned for Leroux. The Mississauga, Ont., native gave up five runs in two innings over two appearances and was quickly designated for assignment. It wasn’t all bad, however, as he took that opportunity to get his bothersome back evaluated and returned better for it.

Photo ci-dessus : RHP Chris Leroux, who spent last season pitching in Japan, is hoping to get another shot with the New York Yankees after his first stint earlier this year was cut short following a pair of rough outings.

“It was still bugging me up until spring training and the season,” Leroux said of his back. “When I got called up, I pitched terribly and I got designated, and I thought that was a perfect time for me to get an MRI and check it out, just in case something was serious. So they sent me down to Tampa and I was there for two months getting it worked on.”

Recovered from what the doctors called “inflammation”, Leroux has been a completely different pitcher for the RailRiders since his return. In his last two International League starts, he has allowed one earned run on four hits in 11 innings, with four walks and seven strikeouts.

Knowing he isn’t just fighting for his spot in New York right now, but also for future contract consideration, the rest of the season is particularly important to the pitcher who already missed two months on the hill.

“Obviously, injuries are bad whenever you have them, but I guess especially in my spot,” Leroux said. “I told my parents the other day I kind of wish I didn’t get called up when I did because I wasn’t at my best.

“Hopefully they don’t forget about me, hopefully I can be down here and pitch well and they can call me back up. But anytime you get injured it sucks. I’ve been hurt a lot in my career.”

There aren’t many players who wish that a call up to Yankee Stadium had been postponed, but Leroux believes his performance might have been different under other circumstances.

“It was a weird situation,” he said. “Obviously I’m grateful that they called me up – I mean, who doesn’t want to pitch with the Yankees? But I wish I had gotten in my groove before they decided to call me up.

“They called me up more out of necessity than me being worthy of earning that spot. Maybe it was because I had a good spring training, but at that particular time I’d had two terrible starts in a row and then they decided to call me up just because they needed somebody and it was my day the next day to start.”

Spending the early part of the season working toward the rotation, moving to New York’s bullpen might have been a factor in the way things went on the mound at Yankee Stadium, but Leroux doesn’t have any qualms with switching gears.

“I’ve been a reliever my whole career so I’m not going to use that as an excuse,” the Montreal-born hurler said. “I just pitched terribly up there and that’s the way it goes. I love starting. I don’t want to harp on this, but I wish they would have waited and then I could have been a starter up there. But I’ve done both so that doesn’t bug me at all.”

Not much appears to be bothering Leroux now, as he has found great success since making his way back to the International League after his rehab in Tampa.

“I’m throwing my changeup more,” he said. “Everybody keeps telling me that I have a great changeup, so I decided to use it more and I’m locating better…But I think it’s [also] being healthy. I’m locating better, my changeup, and I’m learning a cutter so that’s helped a little bit…I feel good and hopefully it continues.”

Though the cutter is still a work in progress, Leroux is happy with the success he’s found with it so far, and is looking forward to what more he can do with it.

“[I’ve used it for] two weeks,” Leroux said. “It’s relatively new. It’s good enough to use in a game, I just hope it gets good enough where I can strike some guys out with it. [I started it with] the pitching coordinator down in Tampa when I was down there rehabbing. I have three pitches and I guess generally good starters tend to have four, so it’s good to have that.”

* * *

Leroux’s journey has come a long way over the last while, transforming himself into a starter and also travelling through several different countries to get to the Yankees. Last summer, he was with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, before injuring his shoulder and being sent home to rest before spending another winter in the Dominican Republic. The former was an eye-opening experience.

“I loved Japan,” Leroux said. “It was great, the food was good, the living conditions were good; the baseball was different. They’re very talented there, don’t get me wrong, but they just hit single after single after single and I was pulling my hair out on the mound. I would look at the scoreboard and I had given up eight hits and four runs in two innings and I’m thinking, ‘how did that even happen?’

“It’s definitely different baseball. You can strike guys out a lot easier here, you can make a good pitch down and they’re going to try to hit a homer instead of just poking it through. Look at Ichiro [Suzuki] or [Munenori] Kawasaki, they hit the exact same way [in Japan], one through nine. It was frustrating.”

In Japan, pitchers tend to throw a lot more than they do in North America. Though the righty did experience an increase in his throwing program, he doesn’t think that’s what did his shoulder in.

“Shoot, I threw a bullpen that was 75 pitches, and my bullpens here are like 20 pitches,” Leroux said. “It’s a lot different. But no [that didn’t affect my shoulder], I was trying to learn a split-finger [fastball] and that put a lot of stress on my arm. Then one split-finger, I felt a pop and just thought, I hope it’s not torn.

“I saw a lot of doctors and then came back home and saw Dr. [James] Andrews and it was just some bad tendinitis. I was pumped [it wasn’t worse]. They sent me home too, which I don’t want to say I loved, but I loved. I came home in the middle of August and just hung out and lived life. I was so excited to be home. I loved Japan, but it was so far away from home.”

The distance and time difference were especially hard on Leroux because he is such a people person, and he had limited interaction with everyone he was close to at home while he was gone.

“It was so hard,” Leroux said. “I love my family, I love my friends and I love having people around me. I would think it was harder for me than a lot of people just because I love having people around to talk to. My parents came once and my brother came once with eight friends, which was cool. But other than that, no [visitors]. I was single at the time, so it wasn’t like I had a girlfriend over there or anything.”

Of course, the pitcher was popular with the fans, and with his light hair and bright blue eyes he stood out among the Japanese crowd, though he didn’t always understand their loyalty.

“Tokyo is the best,” Leroux said. “I loved it. I met so many cool people. It’s just tough because I want to say 99 per cent of people have no clue how to speak English. It’s crazy, and [I stood out].

“At one point, I would be walking out of the stadium trying to get to my ride and it was like I’m The Beatles or something. I gave up eight runs that night. They don’t care, they just want to touch you. And then on the other hand, you’ve got a guy like [fellow Canadian and Yomiuri Giants reliever] Scott Mathieson, who is the best pitcher ever up there. He’s a rock star. Maybe just my style of pitching wasn’t good enough.”

In Santo Domingo, Leroux felt much more at home than he did in Japan.
“I’ve always got along with the Dominican guys; it’s almost like I’m Dominican,” Leroux said. “I don’t speak Spanish, but for some reason they love me, I love them and they take me under their wing. But the place I’ve stayed at for the two times I’ve gone there, it’s a five-star golf resort. We played golf every day, the Kardashians were there filming an episode, it was crazy. It’s a good spot.

“Whenever I tell people who are thinking about going to play winter ball, I tell them they have to go to the Casa de Campo La Romana. It’s a vacation you’re getting paid for. At one point on my off day I was throwing 90 or 100 feet, and one day I…threw on the beach with my buddy.”

Leroux admitted that his experience in the Dominican winter league might have been atypical.

“Then again, there are other teams where you stay at a bad hotel and it’s dangerous, but my experiences have been fantastic,” Leroux said.

“You talk to other guys who say, ‘It sucks, I don’t ever want to go back,’ and I wish I lived there…

“It’s pretty dangerous [on the road], but they’re a third-world country. We have a security guard who carries shotguns and I’m almost used to it now. It was all a learning experience [at first], but now I’m almost thinking I could be the mayor.”

For now, Leroux is feeling pretty at home with the RailRiders, though he’s only been with the team – and the organization – for a short time.
“There are a bunch of good guys in here,” Leroux said of Scranton. “I know we’re not doing so hot right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a bunch of good guys in the clubhouse. I haven’t been here that long and I thought coming to New York it would be uptight and kind of watch what you say, watch what you do, but it’s pretty cool. [General Manager Brian] Cashman’s a great guy.

“I was walking into the clubhouse in New York and it doesn’t matter how many years you’re in the big leagues, you’re just thinking, ‘Holy crap, it’s New York, it’s [Derek] Jeter.’ But it wasn’t like that. They’re just good guys. I would talk to Ichiro all the time, he’s a great guy and we’d joke around.

“[Masahiro] Tanaka – well, I talked to his interpreter obviously – but I had a 20-minute conversation with Tanaka one time and I didn’t even look at him one time, I was just talking to his interpreter. I’ve been with Pittsburgh and Florida and I loved Pittsburgh, but New York is pretty cool too.”

Earning the opportunity to pitch from the mound at Yankee Stadium was pretty special for Leroux, and he is obviously hoping to do it again. But next time, he is hoping for a better response as he walks off the hill.

“It was great,” Leroux said. “Coming to the mound was fantastic, but leaving the mound wasn’t so great when I got booed off the mound. But I think a lot of people have been booed off that mound. I’m just hoping for another shot so I can prove to them that I don’t suck as bad as I did last time.”

Revue de presse publiée par Jacques Lanciault.