Judge will vacate spot on bench
has taken enough walks to have a .345 on-base percentage. He just hasn’t hit the way the Yankees hoped, and with Greg Bird back at first base, there will be days Joe Giardi will have to choose between him and Chase Headley, who has swung the bat well lately.
Frazier seems unfazed at the mention of it.
“It’s a good problem to have,’’ he said. “I’m looking at just trying to win here. I haven’t really thought about it until you bright it up, if you want to know the truth.
“Maybe if I was 25 or 26, it would be something to think about. But I’m at a place (at age 31) where I know my ability, I know what I can do. At the end of the day, I’ll be right where I need to be.”
Frazier says all of this with such an easy, casual confidence, that he really does remind me of talking to Jeter over the years. Frazier is just a lot more open, willing to offer more detail about the ups and downs of hitting.
When I ask him if he got home-run happy as he began hitting 30-plus long balls in Cincinnati, he didn’t flinch.
“It’s a fair question, but I don’t think so. In 2015 I had 43 doubles.” But then he smiled. “I do like hitting home runs, though. That’s the king of all hits, right there. I’m looking for that good feeling but, man, baseball is the hardest game in the world.
“I like to talk to guys about hitting. In Cincinnati I talked to Eric Davis, I talked to Pete Rose. Even Pete, as great a hitter as he was, said he was always tinkering with something.
“I’m always tinkering too. I have to keep working on my swing every day. It’s not the best swing in the world, but it’s not the worst. When I’m on, I’m still with my head and my timing’s right where it needs to be.”
Frazier said he’s been locked in at the plate in a game here and there, but he continues to search. On Monday he set up a pitching machine to throw 95 mph from 45 feet as a drill of sorts.
“It forces you to shorten your stride,’’ he said. “And it gets everything else out of your mind. You get your foot down and go, and for me, when I’m on time with that front foot, then you can see the off-speed stuff better.” razier makes the case that he’s only one at-bat, maybe one pitch from having it all click for him again. This deep into the season, a major turnaround seems unlikely, but I came away from talking to him convinced of one thing for sure:
He believes it.
FAaron Judge was not scheduled to be in the Yankees’ lineup again on Tuesday, but his brief benching appears to be over. After sitting down his slumping slugger for two days — including a series-opening loss to Cleveland one night earlier — Joe Girardi indicated that the rookie outfielder “absolutely” will play in at least one of the games in today’s doubleheader against the Indians.
“Sometimes you just hope that it refreshes a guy, that they can sit back and relax and maybe take a little bit off their plate, and they can get going again,” Girardi said after Tuesday’s game was postponed by rain and rescheduled as a single-admission twinbill beginning at 1 p.m. “It’s worked a lot of times for a lot of guys. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going to happen, but physically I think he’s going to feel a lot fresher than he probably did. And you hope mentally that it does, too.”
Judge, who was not available to the media for a second straight day, is batting .179 with seven home runs, 16 RBI and 65 strikeouts in 41 games since the AllStar break. Judge also has been nursing a leftshoulder injury in recent weeks. “For me, I talk to him and he feels fine and we’ve seen him hit balls 500 feet,” Girardi said. “Again, I think mechanically he is off, and we are doing everything we can to get him back on track.”
CC YA’ AGAINST THE SOX
Girardi announced that Jaime Garcia and Jordan Montgomery will start the two games for the Yanks with CC Sabathia moving back one day to pitch the opening game of the Boston series on Thursday.
“I’m here just to pitch, so whenever they tell me that day is, that’s the day I’m gonna go,” said Sabathia, who is 3-0 with a 0.90 ERA in three starts this season against Boston. “It is what it is, and I’ll be ready to go on Thursday.”
The Yanks won’t face AL East rival Boston again during the regular season after the weekend set concludes on Sunday. “I think they’re all big, any time we play them, especially right now. It’s always a big deal, always big games. We just want to come out and have a good series,” Sabathia said. “It does seem weird that we’re not gonna play them all of September. I’ve never been a part of that. This is my first time in I guess nine years that we won’t play them in September. But every game now for us is so important, and that weekend won’t be any different. So we just have to go out and play well from here on out against whoever we play.”
THE FULL MONTY
The rain-induced rotation shift aligns the Yanks’ four best starters to face the first-place Red Sox, and Girardi revealed they had been considering recalling the rookie Montgomery (7-6, 4.00) anyway from Triple-A Scranton to start today against Cleveland, regardless of the weather. Trevor Bauer and Triple-A call-up Ryan Merritt will start the two games for Cleveland.
DELAYED APPEAL
There’s still been no announcement from MLB on the appeals of the suspensions for catchers Gary Sanchez (four games) and Austin Romine (two) stemming from their involvement in the Yanks’ benchclearing incidents with Detroit last Thursday. … Only tickets dated Wednesday, Aug. 30 will be valid for the doubleheader.