The Charleston Dirty Birds of the Atlantic League lost one former big leaguer yesterday when infielder Drew Ellis signed with the Angels, but they quickly filled that roster spot with another, announcing the signing of outfielder Clint Frazier.
Now 29 years of age, Frazier was the No. 5 overall pick back in 2013 and spent the better part of a half decade ranked among the sport’s top prospects. Cleveland shipped him to the Bronx as part of a deadline blockbuster netting star reliever Andrew Miller in 2016.
For a time, Frazier looked like a potential building block for the Yankees. While injuries (multiple concussions, an ankle sprain, an oblique strain) and a big league roster crowded by well-paid veterans (e.g. Brett Gardner, Aaron Hicks) routinely cut into Frazier’s playing time, he appeared in 123 MLB games from 2018-20 and turned in a combined .267/.351/.485 batting line and popped 20 home runs in just 447 plate appearances. Frazier got a notable run as the team’s primary left fielder in the shortened 2020 season and delivered the best stretch of his career: .267/.394/.511 with eight homers, six doubles, a triple and five steals in just 160 plate appearances.
On the heels of that performance, Frazier secured himself the Opening Day nod in left field for the 2021 Yankees. He hit safely in his first four games and briefly looked to be picking up where he left off, but a protracted slump would soon set in. Frazier wound up struggling mightily through the season’s first three months, hitting .186/.317/.317 with a bloated 29.8% strikeout rate. The Yankees placed him on the injured list in early July with vertigo symptoms. Frazier would not only go on to miss the remainder of the season — he’d ultimately be non-tendered that November, ending his Yankees tenure.
Subsequent low-cost deals with the Cubs and White Sox didn’t get Frazier’s career back on track. He tallied just 45 plate appearances with the former and 76 with the latter, combining for a .204/.322/.262 slash and going homerless on both the north and south side of the Windy City. The once-lauded prospect also had a brief stint in the Rangers organization after inking a minor league pact but didn’t get called up from Triple-A Round Rock.
Tumultuous as his stay in the Bronx was, Frazier showed plenty of promise at times and is still just 29 years old. He won’t turn 30 until September. He’ll face a long road back to the big leagues, but he’d hardly be the first player to parlay a strong showing in the Atlantic League back into affiliated ball.
Underrated
Troll alert
From #5 overall pick in draft to Atlantic league n he’s not even thirty years ol.
umm you do realize that there’s been less than 10,000 players all time play in the mlb past their 30 yr age right?
Just how it goes. Most top picks don’t go on to have very successful careers, let alone lengthy ones.. Look at the top 10 for 2013
Mark Appel
Kris Bryant
Kohl Stewart
Hunter Dozier
Trey Ball
Jon Gray
Phil Bickford
Colin Moran
Austin Meadows
At this point, I think Gray is the only player producing in the majors.
And what have you accomplished
He’s Dre Ellis’ Dirty Birds replacement. Those persistent daily calls to the GM paid off.
I believe he goes by Jackson Frazier now.
He did briefly, and then switched back to Clint.
That was for half a season in 2022 and was apparently a joke. He’s back to Clint.
Canuck – He should have changed it to Clint Strange-Frazier.
Clint Jackson?
Boy, Jackson is a name you don’t want to be in MLB 2024
I remember watching videos of him as a Cleveland prospect and being amazed at his bat speed. Like how does anyone get their hands to move that quickly? I thought he was a sure thing
To me it has to be the injuries. Maybe his body never fully healed. Maybe the concussions/vertigo screwed up his ability to see and hit in a permanent way.
yea i was totally mesmerized by the bat speed. thought….well you can’t teach that, that’s high exit velo’s, waiting for an eternity to make a decision ala bonds, really thought he’d be something. not a fan of any team he’s been on, just always thought picking him up was a good move, this is the time. whatever. baseball is quite hard.
I remember thinking that 2/3 of their outfield would be set for years with him and Bradley Zimmer. Feels like forever ago.
They missed on Zimmer and Frazier and Naquin had about half a good season. All three were lauded for bat speed, athleticism and swing respectively. None made much of an impact in the majors. I remember being bummed they didn’t package Zimmer instead of Frazier. Zimmers KO rate was always alarming.
Agreed, he’s never quite been the same since the concussions. Real shame.
Was one helluva Yankeeography
I love learning new words, and that is a classic. Thanks for sharing.
Weird time to develop for those rookie classes with the balls being manipulated. Frazier should never have been swinging for the fences but the juiced balls made himself and the Yankees front office overrate his power and told him to sell out for the HR. He was never the same player from that moment, not the concussions. He should’ve been shooting for the role of being a pesky hitter who could grind AB’s with 2 strikes by having the quick swing to foul pitches off and piss pitchers off. He still would’ve wound up putting some over the fence but he also wouldn’t have been striking out like he was.
I feel like baseball’s inconsistency and rule changes messes up a lot of prospects and organizations for that matter.
If you really think, going back to the juiced ball, how many bad contracts were given out because of that year? How many bad contracts were given out because of spider tack? How many pitchers are struggling because baseball changed the ball this year? Why does double A use a pre-tacked ball and neither AAA or MLB do?
Frazier andujar and delvi Garcia greatest trade package to never happen.
Too bad they didn’t trade Andujar and Frazier when the Pirates wanted them for Cole.
we got Cole for free 2 years later anyway… the too bad with Cole is that if he REALLY wanted to be a Yankee like he said, he should have signed when we drafted him like Volpe did
Seems like Cole made the right move, since he got an education and an 8 million dollar signing bonus when he was the 1st overall pick a few years later
then again, IF the Yankees HAD made that trade, Gerrit Cole maybe doesn’t learn how to pitch from playing with Justin Verlander and is basically what Jameson Taillon was in NY… Miguel Andujar doesn’t destroy his shoulder and continues the pace he had in his rookie season, Clint Frazier doesn’t get the concussion injuries and keeps putting up .905 OPS seasons and everyone is blaming Cashman right now trading away 2 young stars.
it think their swings (Clint Fraziers insane bat speed and the torque of Andujar’s tomahawk swing) contributed to Frazier not recovering from the concussions and Andujar from the shoulder injury/botched surgery… but of course everyone will blame Cashman for prospect hugging and not giving them a chance to return
28 Rings I definitely agree with you. Also Cole really became elite while with Houston. My post was more to Yankees troll Ray who doesn’t seem to realize the Yankees could have gotten impact players for Frazier and Andujar.
Joe, the reason Cole went off in Houston I think was due to 1 simple change. Pitch high heat instead of the Ray Searage philosophy of “low and away” to drive ground balls.
No one was hitting Cole’s heater out of the park for a HR but plenty of guys learned to hit 2B and HRs with different launch angles on low thrown balls in the zone.
Cole “took off” in Houston because he learned to doctor balls.
Everyone talks about sign stealing and ignores the fact that the Astros pitchers were in their “pitch lab” learning how to hide and best utilize spider tack.
plus Matt Blake wasn’t Yankees pitching coach until after the 2019 season. if the Yankees traded for Cole for 2018 & 2019 Larry Rothschild probably screws him up the way he screwed up Sonny Gray.
Larry would have him doing towel drills
Especially when there is no such player named Delvi Garcia.
Still time to trade him to the A’s for Andujar!
Good attendance draw for the DBs
No way. Imagine how good the dirty birds will be when they trade Frazier for Ohtani.
Met him at an Arby’s in Akron when he was still in the Cleveland org. We really thought he was going to be a star one day
2019 made a lot of batters look good. Year of the juiced balls.
he was better in 2020 than 2019
I remember going to a lot of Lynchburg Hillcats games when he and Bradley Zimmer were here. We all thought we were seeing two future all stars back then.
Poor logo for a great team name.
That team needs to revamp their logo and jerseys. So much potential and it looks so boring.
3/10 rating.
Charleston is the same team that had Bobby Bradley last year. He was a pretty good prospect with Cleveland for most of the same time that Frazier was.
If you had told me ten years ago that the two of them would be replacing each other in the middle of a lineup, I would have thought it would be the Dodgers.
Whether it’s “Clint” or “Jackson” Frazier one thing is for sure: they would have been better off signing Todd…
Even Adam would be an upgrade
Wasn’t Clint Frazier supposed to be in Monument Park by now?
Surprised an MLB team didn’t pick him up to trade for Trout at the deadline. Although, since Trout is injured, the Angels would have to throw in some prospects, of course.
@fred lingenfelser. How many accounts do you have username1.
@Fred Lingenfelser
Trout’s an injury liability so the Angels would have to throw in a bunch of prospects and pay a chuck of his salary for any trade to happen.
@old York how many more accounts are you going to use to say the same thing.
@Rexhudler86
I’ll need 20 more.
He’ll probably retire and become a hitting coach
The best coaches tend to be prospects that never panned out. Just like the best teachers tend to be C students, not A students. It is a lot easier to relate to young players if you understand the struggles they are going through.
frazier/andujar jokes are tired
they were above-average regulars who got hurt. in frazier’s case his injury goes beyond baseball and could impact him for the rest of his life. every team has their “what might have been” stories
Don’t have to look too deep here. Multiple concussions? It only takes one well-aimed conk to knock anyone off-center for months or years. Hand-eye becomes scrambled.
Among the many who couldn’t overcome one, ask Mike Matheny. Frazier was cleared to play, so perhaps the parallel here is misplaced.
TBI affects aren’t uniform. One might get over the effects of a moderate or severe one somewhat quickly, or never. Each person’s outcome differs.
Following, timing, then connecting on a big league pitch is crazy impossible. Add in a permanent wobble to the senses?
It likely took all of his native ability just to do as poorly as he did, assuming concussions did him in. If it wasn’t that, well, I’m sorry. Please carry on.
Seemingly minor injuries can have major effects on players (not that a concussion is all that minor).
Kris Bryant is a pretty good example of a guy who had his career derailed, had a fairly significant shoulder injury, came back a bit weaker, adjusted his swing to compensate for his decreased power and now is a shell of his former self.
The thing is also, players do it all the time. Play hurt and change their swing slightly to compensate, go on to have subpar seasons because they cannot get their swing back (or their pitching mechanics).
Maybe Greg Bird can get his 7,000 more chances for this team too.
Next announcement will probably be, Clint Frazier signs with bobs bar and grill in the men’s softball league
“Tumultuous as his stay in the Bronx was” is NOT proper English. You can’t just leave “as” out at the beginning of the sentence. Grammar isn’t optional.