When Ben Rice hit multiple baseballs north of 113 MPH, I knew the Yankees had one choice at the DH spot, and that was even with an average below the Mendoza Line. Spring Training results are cool, but ultimately I care more about a player’s process and underlying metrics because those things tend to matter way more in small sample sizes. You also have to adjust for the level of competition, as hitters often face pitchers who aren’t expected to make the Major League roster, and so box score numbers can be inflated by gaudy numbers against low-level prospects.
Hitters have 100% control over their max output when it comes to exit velocity though, the opponent plays a small role if any role at all in a hitter’s max EV, and Rice has shown huge improvements there. The five hardest-hit balls of his entire pro career have come just from this Spring Training alone, and that includes both his Minor League days and other Spring Training years.
His Raw Power tool has improved by a noticeable margin, and that added muscle could end up making him an extremely impactful bat for the Yankees in 2025.
Ben Rice Has Earned Every Right to Win the Yankees’ DH Job
The Yankees have a vacancy at DH with Giancarlo Stanton on the IL for an indefinite amount of time, and Ben Rice has made so much progress during Spring Training that he is just the best fit for the job. A young emerging slugger who showed off some real pop, last season scared some of the hype away for him as people saw the ugly results and concluded that this was nothing more than a scenario where a hitter received far too much hype for gaudy MiLB numbers.
Instead, what you see is a player who was arguably the unluckiest hitter in the game, as he underperformed his expected wOBA, SLG%, and BA by the largest margin for any hitter in the big leagues. The Yankees are a smart organization and develop players well, but I believe they botched his usage down the stretch, as they opted to cut down his playing time when he hit the skids instead of allowing him to play through them.
It was something they did with Austin Wells, who not only had a similarly unlucky start to his 2024 season but also went a full month without barreling a single baseball from May to June. The Yankees let him play through those issues and it resulted in a strong finish to his season, one that catapulted him into some pretty exclusive conversations at the catcher position.
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Ben Rice seems to have taken the choice to play DJ LeMahieu and Anthony Rizzo over him personally, as he has proceeded to hit his five hardest-hit balls ever recorded at the pro level. The left-handed slugger is torching the ball, and what would usually end up being a deep flyout has become a ball that soars to the wall in the blink of an eye. A year ago his power was already considered above-average, but he’s smashing the ball hard more consistently on top of maxing out at a higher number.
One of the most eye-popping pieces of data here is that Ben Rice through this point of Spring Training (25 Batted Ball Events) has a higher 90th Percentile EV than Aaron Judge did last season when he won AL MVP. It’s a 0.1 MPH gap, but that’s still absolutely insane considering that a year ago Ben Rice averaged a 104.6 MPH EV90 in the big leagues and a 106.1 in Triple-A.
Those are some serious gains, and his already above-average damage rates could become truly elite, which is scary when you mix in the league-average contact rates and strong plate discipline. Ben Rice doesn’t hit the ball into the ground much either, so if he’s hitting the ball this hard in the air this often, he could very easily hit 25-30 HRs and provide a much-needed spark in the middle of the Yankees’ offense.
Dominic Smith is having a strong camp and that’s great, but I ultimately do not believe he’s changed much as a hitter from last year to this one. Is he a good depth piece to have at 1B? Absolutely, he would have been far better than Anthony Rizzo or DJ LeMahieu was last season, but he should still be stashed in Triple-A in case of emergency, not placed on the 26-man roster to steal playing time away from Rice.
They still need a right-handed batter for the bench, preferably at third base, but if Ben Rice can live up to his potential (and his odds of doing so have increased a noticeable bit with this power spike), the Yankees could score a lot of runs in 2025.