New York Yankees: Clint Frazier responds to comments by Michael Kay

One of the New York Yankees most promising young players has been battling concussion symptoms all year-long.  Recently Michael Kay made his opinion known on Frazier’s injury status and Frazier took offense to those comments.

According to a video on Twitter of a phone interview during a show on the YES Network, Michael Kay was critical of Clint Frazier‘s injury status.  After sharing his displeasure that Luke Voit and Shane Robinson were in the lineup during important games against the Boston Red Sox, Kay had the following to say about Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury:

"“Shame on the Yankees for not having the depth, but again, shame on guys like Jacoby Ellsbury for not getting healthy, shame on Clint Frazier for not getting healthy.  Again, you can’t make them get healthy, but if those guys are available, it’s a completely different animal.”"

Frazier has been dealing with concussion symptoms that have not gone away following a collision with a wall during spring training and Ellsbury has been dealing with a variety of injuries all season long.  However, both players have continuously worked to get back to the team, but their health has not improved enough to allow them to compete on the field.

Michael Kay did attempt to cover his comment by immediately saying the players cannot be made to get healthy, but the comments were still a poor choice of words for the YES Network’s main play-by-play announcer.

Although Michael Kay may have been facetious with his comments, they were still very insensitive to two players that would love nothing more than to be playing against the Red Sox at Fenway Park in very important games.

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Whether Kay was being facetious with his comments or not, this Tweet by Frazier is definitely understandable.  For a young player, it was a proper response of displeasure without going overboard as well.

This was an unfortunate thing for Kay to say on the air for a player that has felt helpless all season due to concussion symptoms.  According to Dan Martin of the New York Post, Frazier also experienced “scary symptoms” by even forgetting the names of his cats following his collision with the wall in March of this year.

"“This has to be the worst injury I’ve ever had. I didn’t feel right today hitting. I felt foggy, that is the word of the day. I felt splotchy. … There are some positives that have come out of the last few days, but I want all positives.”"

According to Lindsey Adler of The Athletic, Frazier cried a little when he came out of a game in Triple-A following a diving catch in the outfield on July 19th.  He was removed from the game due to the return of concussion symptoms and he has been on the disabled list ever since.  This is definitely not an injury that a player should be expected to play through to get back on the field.

One thing to remember with Michael Kay is that he grew up in the Bronx and has been an avid Yankees fan his entire life.  Much like most of the Yankees universe, Kay was upset following a brutal four game sweep against the Red Sox, so this outrage as a fan led to these comments.

Nonetheless, it seems appropriate for a professional broadcaster to apologize to a player for the comments rather than to keep pushing that the comments were facetious to try to end the discussion.  Concussions are very serious and Kay should understand why Frazier is upset about his comments.