TORONTO — Former Yankees outfielder Clint Frazier opted to take his mostly still-untapped talents and baggage to the land of cornfields.
A week after being designated for assignment by the Chicago Cubs, Frazier opted to remain in the organization playing for Triple-A Iowa as a non-roster player rather than become a free agent.
Why?
Apparently nobody was willing to sign the often-injured and controversial redhead to be on its big-league roster.
Frazier made his decision Friday after the Yankees and 28 other clubs passed on adding him as a waiver claim.
It’s surely been a frustrating, humbling and embarrassing last week for Frazier, who was DFA’d by the Cubs on June 10 while he was in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium preparing for his first game against his former team.
The news of the DFA also came a day after Frazier took more shots at the Yankees for having an appearance policy.
“You had to be a cookie-cutter version to be on that (Yankees) team,” Frazier told the Chicago Sun-Times. “If not, then you were like a really bad distraction, it seemed like. So I don’t miss being told how I had to look for the last five years.
Frazier hit .216 with one RBI in 19 games with the Cubs, 15 as a starter. He also spent almost a month on the injured list recovering from an appendectomy. He played eight rehab games with Iowa, batting .148 with four hits and two RBI in 27 at-bats.
Frazier, 27, signed a one-year, $1.5 million contract with the Cubs on Nov. 30. He had been released a week earlier by the Yankees, who initially DFA’d him to free up a 40-man roster spot.
For the Yankees, he hit .239 with 29 homers and 97 RBI in 707 at-bats over 228 games from 2017-21. Last year, he batted .186 with five homers and 15 RBI in 66 games suffering a season-ending injury in August that the Yankees listed as vertigo.
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Randy Miller may be reached at rmiller@njadvancemedia.com.
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