Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier has had one of the most frustrating seasons imaginable, battling concussion-related health issues all year and not having the roster spot on the MLB roster that he deserves to have.
Clint Frazier deserves to be starting on a Major League Baseball team right now. His numbers, albeit in a small sample size, reflect that in 2018.
Clint has made 41 plate appearances on the MLB level this year, slashing .265/.390/.353 (114 wRC+). His 31.7 K% is still too high, but he’s compensated for much of that by working a 12.2 BB% in his 15 games, up from just 4.9 percent in 39 games in 2017.
The worst part about Clint’s injuries this year is that he’s been forced to miss some genuine opportunities to carve out a role for himself in the big leagues.
During the opening weeks of the season, Aaron Hicks was down with an injury and Clint could have come up and been the fourth outfielder/extra DH for a few weeks. Instead, the Yankees had to call up Billy McKinney, who got hurt, and guys like Shane Robinson and Jace Peterson started games for the Yanks in the outfield in April.
Now, Aaron Judge is out with an injury and one would think that that could have carved out a nice role for Clint and Giancarlo Stanton to split time in right field and DH, but he has been out for a while with post-concussion migraines. He was supposedly going to start hitting again last Wednesday, but there hasn’t been a report on that.
The Yankees have struggled overall since Judge has gone down. They don’t have Gary Sanchez either. Both will be back sometime around the last week of August or first week of September, barring a setback.
Because of the Yankees struggles, they were just swept by Boston, the media has been talking about what’s wrong with the team that has the third best record in baseball.
Yankees play-by-play announcer and New York radio icon Michael Kay said on his radio show that the injuries were to blame. One of the quotes blamed Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury for their struggles with health, Kay saying “Shame on [them] for not being healthy.”
Kay said the statements were made to be facetious and I agree that they were. That said, take a listen and tell me if he used a facetious tone.
http://twitter.com/MaxWildstein/status/1026561630526693377
He sounds very serious, to me, even though I don’t think he meant to be.
Clint Frazier heard the quotes and tweeted at Kay, himself.
.@RealMichaelKay facetious or not, I don’t appreciate what you said today. i’m doing everything I can to get healthy so I can play symptom free … so steer clear of publicly calling me out for not when we haven’t even had one convo about my concussion this year. #ShameOnYouBro
— Clint Frazier (@clintfrazier) August 7, 2018
A report came out on Tuesday morning that Kay has apologized, acknowledging that he would and should never blame a player for being injured, especially when they are doing all they can to get healthy and play.
Hopefully, the two can put this situation behind them and Clint can come and be a contributor to big club as soon as possible. That would be the best thing.
