The New York Yankees Clint Frazier was born on September 6, 1994, in Loganville, Georgia. He is of Scot descent and played baseball in the outfield of the Loganville high school’s baseball team. He played well and in his senior year, he batted .485 with 17 home runs and 45 RBI’s. He was even named the Gatorade National Baseball Player of the Year.
Clint doesn’t have to borrow a dollar for a coke, he was given a 3.5 million signing bonus with the Cleveland Indians, being selected fifth in the 2013 draft. He decided to sign with the Indians instead of attending college at the University of Georgia. After the signing, he was sent to Arizona to play with the minor league team there. In his first game, he hit a triple and a home run. In 2014 he played for their Class A team the Captains of the mid-west league. He batted .266 with 13 home runs in 120 games.
Frazier’s big break came in July of 2016 when the Indians traded Clint to the Yankees in a multi-trade that got the Indians, Andrew Miller. Clint was assigned the triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders. In 2017 Clint played in 73 games for the Rail Riders amassed 42 RBI’s, a batting average of .257 with 12 home runs. The reason he played only 73 games is that he was called up to the stadium on July 1st of 2017. Big Red or Red Thunder as he is called, enamored himself to Yankee fans on July 8th, when hit his first career walk-off home run, giving the Yankees a win over the Brewers.
During spring training in Tampa in 2018 in catching a fly ball to the left-field, he crashed into the wall and suffered a concussion, which ended his 2018 season. From May to August he was frequently on the AAA/Stadium shuttle although seldom playing. On September 8th the Yankee Manager Aaron Boone said that Frazier would miss the rest of the season to receive treatment for ongoing symptoms caused by the concussion.
As spring training started last year, the never shy Frazier announced that he was ready to make an impact, and wanted Brett Gardner’s left-field job, when the time was right. During spring training Clint was not particularly remarkable. Boone said that he would probably be sent down to the minors to start the season, which is what happened. Frazier was given another big chance to prove himself, due to all the New York Yankee injuries. He was called up April 1st and in three games and 10 at-bats he had 2 hits and 1 RBI and a batting average of just .200.
During June of 2019, all Clint Frazier did was hit. In fact, he hit .320 with four multi-hit games. Despite his hot hotting, Frazier was controversial as he failed at times in the field, and then there was the episode when he failed to answer questions about his poor fielding. When Edwin Encarnacion was traded to the Yankees from Seattle, the Yankees made the decision that rankled many but sent Frazier down to Scranton. Frazier then further damaged his reputation by tweeting snarky comments about the Yankees and removing everything Yankee from his social media. Many consider these actions quite immature and to be a real Yankee he needs to grow up.
While at Scranton Wilkes/Barre Frazier had hit for a .283 average with eleven home runs and 34 runs batting in. Clint has been mostly hugely popular and made a big impact on getting the Yankees over the .500 mark earlier in the last season. He ended his major league season playing in 69 games with a .267 batting average and 12 home runs. Also, last year although he had a miserable fielding percentage in right field replacing Aaron Judge, he did improve his play in left field with a 1.000 fielding percentage in seventeen games.
This year in spring training and the delayed summer camp, a new more mature Clint Frazier had appeared. He played well behind the plate and in the field during the training camps. After baseball restarted after the coronavirus shutdown, Frazier was the only player that elected to play in the field and at-bat with the use of a face mask. When interviewed he stated that it wasn’t a problem, he was wearing the mask to protect his fellow players.
But even that new maturity, it didn’t help Frazier. When the New York Yankees announced their 40 man roster at the beginning of the season, Frazier found himself back at Scranton. Fast forward to this past week, Giancarlo Stanton injured a hamstring running the bases at Tampa. The New York Yankees in a somewhat puzzling move called up Thairo Estrada instead of the obvious left field replacement, Clint Frazier. In this shortened season, Yankee and Clint Frazier fans are wondering if he will see major league action this year. With almost any other team he would be hitting third or fourth in their lineup, but with the Yankees, he continues to sit and wait for another chance at Yankee stardom.
UPDATE:
Apparently the Yankees have decided bringing Estrada up instead of Frazier was not the correct move. Today they have sent Estrada back down to Scranton. According to the New York Post, they have information that the Yankees will call up Clint Frazier before Tuesday’s start of a two-game series with the Atlanta Braves.