The wait for Clint Frazier seems to continue.
All signs pointed to Frazier having enough time out in the field earlier in the regular season, with Aaron Judge, Aaron Hicks and Giancarlo Stanton dealing with injuries during spring training.
Then came the shutdown in March due to the coronavirus, and now that the Opening Day reboot is approaching, all outfielders are expected to be ready to play.
“It’s frustrating at the level that I knew my playing time was going to be limited the longer the layoff lasted,” Frazier said Sunday. “But obviously those guys play a very important role in our team. I want to play, but I don’t want it to be at the expense of someone getting hurt and me playing for it. I want to win it. “
And that will be almost impossible if Judge, Hicks, and Brett Gardner are healthy.
Frazier will turn 26 in September and it has been almost four years since he entered the business that sent Andrew Miller to the Indians. He has been sidelined by concussions and other injuries and was hoping to have a bigger impact in 2020.
“It’s a great year in the sense that I felt I had a good opportunity in spring training to perform as I did last year,” said Frazier. “I have a lot of … goals that I want to achieve, and obviously in 60 games, it’s hard to do. It was a great time for me in the spring to possibly have a place, and possibly take it away from me. Possibly not. ”
With teams authorized to keep 30 players on the roster for the first two weeks of the season, Frazier may still have his chance, though he’s been dealing with plantar fasciitis on his right foot.
He served as DH in Sunday’s simulated game, and manager Aaron Boone said he could return to the field on Tuesday.
Frazier has also been making changes to his body.
He entered the camp heavier than before and said he continued to gain weight during spring training, and that he finally became “15-20 pounds” heavier than a year ago.
Frazier said he was told that the extra weight may have caused the injured foot and that it has improved since he lost most of the weight that had initially increased.
“I was trying to gain weight, and ultimately I don’t think my body could handle it because the second spring ended, I started to lose weight,” said Frazier.
Initially he had believed that most of it would benefit his game, but then he had doubts.
“I felt like I could swing a little bit harder,” Frazier said. “I felt like I had more weight behind the ball and hit it a little harder, but I felt that in some areas it was preventing me. It wasn’t that fast, it felt like spring. It made it harder for me to shoot like I used to. “
Since she lost weight, she says she is “symptom free.”
Boone said he understands why Frazier may have been looking to strengthen himself, pointing to Bryson DeChambeau, the 26-year-old who has taken the PGA Tour by storm since adding 40 pounds of muscle.
“A lot of people questioned it, but it seems to be working,” Boone said of DeChambeau’s physical transformation. “I have great faith in our strength and conditioning program. With Clint, we will see what is the correct number for him, but I feel that both [the weight gain and loss] came from a workplace. “
That is why Boone is confident that Frazier is ready to contribute, both physically and mentally.
“He continues to mature as a person and a professional,” said the manager. “I never had a problem with his work ethic, but I feel that his work continued to improve, being stronger and smarter in every way.”
And that includes his work in the garden, which has been a problem.
“It’s not like we take a guy who’s not a good athlete and who has these expectations,” Boone said. “This is a guy who has a chance to be really good because of his ability.”
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