Clint Frazier is telling his side of the rough ending to his Yankees career, including his mental health battle, physical condition and how it affected his play.
The 27-year-old Frazier, who signed a one-year, $1.5 million deal with the Cubs in November after being released by the Yankees, said during an appearance on Barstool’s Short Porch podcast that it wasn’t until recently that he faced struggles with his mental health. It affected his quality of life and he knew he needed to take it seriously.
“I was severely symptomatic with some of these past issues that I was having,” Frazier said. “I was like, ‘We gotta pick the pace up. I need help. I need serious f—in help.’ ”
His season ended in August after he pulled himself from a rehab game. Frazier missed significant time with a confusing medical condition that was originally called vertigo, before that was later ruled out. The outfielder, who played five seasons in The Bronx, finally brought some more clarity about what he was experiencing and how it affected him, saying he had “depth-perception issues.”
“When people were all over me for diving, I was just trying to catch the ball,” Frazier said. “I thought the ball was right here, and it was right there.”
He did admit to not revealing his symptoms to the Yankees prior to spring training, saying they were unaware he was “fighting for my life.” Frazier, who has dealt with concussions, said the physical issues eventually came back. The stadium lights or crowd noise could have an impact on how he felt.
“I showed up to spring training and started to feel better, and then it kind of, like, came back, because I had an instance where I bumped the wall again,” he said. “I went into the whole season feeling that exact way.”
It left him needing to separate baseball and his health because it was impacting his quality of life. He said he was “severely struggling with this stuff” and not having an actual diagnosis for so long only made things worse. Frazier hit .186 in 66 games with the Yankees after being named the starting left fielder to open the season.
Despite how things ended with the Yankees, Frazier described his relationship with former manager Aaron Boone as “cordial” and said he feels like he and general manager Brian Cashman are still “boys” and called him “cool as hell.”
“The text messages him and I would exchange to each other, the way we talked to each other, it was like we weren’t just GM/player. We were like, I would say as much friends as we were allowed to be. He had my back the entire time.”
Frazier said he does want to have some face-to-face conversations with people in the organization when he is scheduled to return to The Bronx as a Cub this season in June.
“There’s a couple people that are very deserving of conversations that I would like to have in person, especially whenever I’m there,” Frazier said. “I’m not calling nobody, I’m not doing it over text. There’s some things that I am going to say.
“And I don’t know who it’s going to be, it just depends on who it is because there’s some things that I want to address now and some things that are very like damaging to my career-type things that were said after I was released that were making it exponentially harder for me to sign on with a team.”
He added that there were bigger offers than the one he received from the Cubs. Frazier said wanting to get a deal done before the current MLB lockout played a role as well as his connection with new Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins from their time together with the Indians.
“I tried to sign before the lockout just because I knew I wasn’t going to be on the top of the list of everyone’s priorities,” Frazier said. “I wanted to get my situation handled before some of these other guys that needed to sign did. It was weird, but I have no complaints.”
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