No matter who comes back for Yankees, Clint Frazier is entrenched in lineup
With Aaron Judge potentially back by this weekend, the Yankees are looking at an almost whole healthy team. While Clint Frazier has played pretty exclusively at right field during Judge’s absence, Boone said Frazier’s spot on the roster and in the lineup is safe.
“He is very much in this mix. Obviously, when Aaron Judge comes back, he’ll go to right so it will mean more left field reps for Clint,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “But Clint’s earned his way into our lineup on a regular basis as he continues to play extremely well for us on both sides of the ball. I just think it’s going to make us deeper and excited about that.”
Frazier went 2-for-4 Sunday and scored an eighth-inning go-ahead run as the Yankees completed the sweep of the Orioles with a 3-1 win at the Stadium. That is a dramatic difference from last season when the Yankees acquired Edwin Encarnacion in June and Frazier showed his frustration when he was optioned to make room. Frazier made a point to say he was done playing amateur GM this summer and he shrugged off the news of Judge’s return.
“When I did come back, I wanted to do really well from the start and having a couple good games in a row helped with the confidence and just building off of that was obviously a positive,” said Frazier of being recalled from the alternate training site in Scranton when Stanton went down. "I think if I wasn’t in this situation before where I had come up and produced it would add a little more pressure, but being 26 now it’s not as much pressure as it was in the past just because I’ve kind of been in this situation for a while now.
