After five tumultuous years in New York, Clint Frazier is getting a fresh start in Chicago.
The Cubs agreed on a one-year deal with Frazier on Tuesday, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. Still just 27, Frazier was the fifth overall pick in the 2013 Draft and was one of the top prospects in baseball when he went from Cleveland to the Yankees in the Andrew Miller trade in 2016, but Frazier struggled with myriad health issues over parts of five seasons in New York and was released last week.
The Cubs didn’t confirm an agreement with Frazier, which would be pending a physical exam.
Frazier’s best season came in 2019, when he hit .267/.317/.489 with 12 homers in a career-high 69 games. His trajectory has been altered by various injuries, including lingering concussion effects following a 2018 crash into an outfield wall and unspecified issues this past season that the club initially diagnosed as vertigo, including dizziness. He played in 66 games in 2021 and had a .633 OPS.
“I’d love to have the opportunity to talk about this situation publicly and probably plan to do so soon — my issues have been very personal to me and something I’ve wanted to handle privately, but there’s been a lot of inaccurate things reported about my injury that I’ll clear up,” Frazier said in a tweet on Oct. 28.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said earlier this month that he believed Frazier is close to being ready for Spring Training. And Yankees manager Aaron Boone spoke of a player with plenty of career ahead of him.
“Fortunately for him, his story is not complete from a baseball standpoint,” Boone said last week. “The bottom line for Clint is, he’s a guy with a lot of ability. It’s just a matter of he’s dealt with some injuries and different things that kept him off the field at times. But I feel if he gets the right opportunity and [stays healthy], he still has a really good opportunity to write a really good career story.”
