Erik Boland: Yankees' Ben Rice needs to start every day regardless of who is pitching
Yankees first baseman Ben Rice flips his bat after hitting a home run against the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Ed Murray
Ben Rice started against a lefthander for the third time this season on Saturday.
That should be the rule rather than the exception — at least in the near future.
Rice went 1-for-3 in the Yankees' 13-4 annihilation of the Royals at the Stadium. The hit was a second-deck home run to rightfield off lefthander Noah Cameron that capped a five-run third inning.
“Benny’s just continuing to . . . solidify himself as one of the really outstanding hitters in the league,” manager Aaron Boone said. “And we’re seeing that more and more, whatever hand you throw with.”
The Yankees and Boone set social media afire earlier in the week when Rice, the club’s best hitter the first three weeks of the season, did not start back-to-back games against the Angels because of lefty starters on the mound.
In a vacuum, those decisions, including also sitting Rice earlier in the year against lefties Robbie Ray of the Giants and Steven Matz of the Rays, had their merits.
Paul Goldschmidt, who has mashed lefthanders throughout his 16-year career — including last season, when he hit .336 with a .981 OPS against them — needs to get reps. And he will get them.
It’s just that, at the moment, as the Yankees' offense tries to find its footing — Saturday’s 11-hit, four-homer attack aside — it simply didn’t make sense to put the club’s one consistent bat in the freezer.
Rice, who has homered in three straight games for the first time in his career, is hitting .339 with seven homers — one behind Aaron Judge for the team lead — and a 1.242 OPS.
He came into the afternoon with more-than-respectable numbers against lefthanded pitching, batting .286 (4-for-14) with a homer and an .833 OPS, numbers he bumped in a positive direction with his 1-for-2 showing against Cameron on Saturday.
Rice is all over the league-leader lists, entering Saturday ranked second in the majors in OPS (1.205) and slugging (.746), third in on-base percentage (.459) and tied for fourth in extra-base hits (12).
“I’ve just been able to so aggressively use Benny, even though he’s not in the starting lineup,” Boone said before Tuesday’s game against the Angels, who that night started lefthander Reid Detmers. “I’ve been able to kind of fire him at the most important part — and it might be early in the game.”
Boone, in defending the moves, correctly has called Rice a “weapon” that can be deployed from the bench, which undoubtedly is true.
But why fire that weapon once or twice a game when you can have it for four or five at-bats? It fails the logic test, especially when considering the struggles of the vast majority of the lineup in the early going.
Rice, who like most minor-leaguers didn’t get a lot of pinch-hitting experience during his development, has embraced the preparation required for his potential role as a pinch hitter on the days it’s been called for. That hasn’t been often; Rice entered the weekend 1-for-3 as a pinch hitter this season, the one hit an eighth-inning homer April 10 against the Rays in St. Petersburg (Matz started the game for Tampa Bay) in a 5-3 loss.
“I’m familiar with the role,” Rice said on Tuesday. “I had that a lot last year, so no different this year. I’m experienced with it, and I know if I’m not starting, there’s a good chance that I’m going to be in there in a high-leverage situation against one of their back-end righties.”
Rice, who assumed everyday duties at first base from Goldschmidt more and more in last year’s second half, went 2-for-12 as a pinch hitter in 2025.
But that was last year.
As the second half progressed, it became clear that the Yankees believed Rice, even as he was learning first base on the fly at the big-league level, could be their first baseman of the future, their most potent bat at the position since the switch-hitting Mark Teixeira (before his body began breaking down toward the end of his career).
The Yankees stated as much during the offseason, saying their plan was for Rice to be the everyday first baseman in 2026. That remained the case after signing Goldschmidt just before the start of spring training.
The Yankees were willing to live with Rice’s up-and-down performance in the field, which continues to trend upward, impressive for a player who was drafted and developed as a catcher. They were OK with the hiccups involved in that in exchange for, they hoped and believed, the continued development of what they saw as a middle-of-the-order bat for years to come.
Goldschmidt’s “superpower,” Boone has said, is his ability to hit lefthanders. In his career, he has hit .323 with a 1.005 OPS against lefties, and those numbers alone dictate that he should see his share of time against them.
But as Saturday again proved, it can’t be automatic that Rice sits when the opposition starts a lefthander.
For that to happen, Rice needs to show, in a large sample size, he absolutely can’t hit them.
Small sample size that it is, Rice has shown the opposite.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
