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Tyler Austin’s dad takes Yankees frustration out on Greg Bird.

It’s not just Yankees fans getting on Greg Bird’s case this season.

The father of Tyler Austin, the first baseman the Yankees dealt to the Twins at the trade deadline to ease the glut at the position, has been directing his frustration at the player the Yankees stayed loyal to, Greg Bird. In two Twitter posts this month that Chris Austin deleted but which were preserved on the web, he called out Bird for his struggles at the plate in comparison to son Tyler’s hot start in Minnesota.

“18 homerun for Tyler on the year but bird is the word,” Chris Austin wrote Aug. 11, when Tyler hit a two-run homer in his debut with the Twins. The statistic Chris used was his son’s home-run total at the time over games in the majors and Triple-A this season.

“Tyler has more hits with the twins in a week than bird has in a month with the Yankees,” Chris posted a week later, on a day Tyler had three hits, including one homer, in a Twins loss to the Tigers. For the month of August, Austin is hitting .391 in seven games with his new team while Bird has a paltry .148 average in 18 games.

Austin, though a top prospect in the Yankees system with enticing power, became expendable to the Yankees as they sought pitching help at the midway point, acquiring right-hander Lance Lynn in the Minnesota trade. The Yankees continue to preach faith in the 25-year-old Bird despite being prone to injury and so far inconsistent at the plate.

These were the types of comparisons Chris Austin, active on Twitter mainly when it relates to his son’s baseball accomplishments, comically thought unfair to make when his son and Bird were teammates.

“I am a Atlanta braves fan yes my son is on the Yankees. You will never here [sic] me bitch about a player that is not doing well,” he wrote in a June post. “All these Yankees fans bitching about a player that is not doing well need to chill out they will come around. Sit back and watch a great Yankees game.”

He shouldn’t take for granted his son gets to play more regularly now, on a team that sits 25 games behind the first-place Yankees in the AL wild card standings.

https://nypost.com/2018/08/20/tyler-austins-dad-takes-yankees-frustration-out-on-greg-bird/