Ben Rice is someone who has been maligned early in his MLB career by bad luck, but the Yankees have seen some serious growth from the Dartmouth alumni this Spring. He’s shown up to camp with added muscle, which has resulted in tons of damage contact early on, even if they haven’t all resulted in hits. The Yankees look beyond results however, and hitting coach James Rowson spoke glowingly about him following a game where he didn’t record a hit against the Pirates.
“I love what I see. What I see is experience taking flight. We saw what he can do when he’s going well. You learn from the times that you’re not going well.”
The Yankees know what they have in the young hitter, and it’s someone capable of being a middle-of-the-order threat, which Joel Sherman reported on earlier this winter. With Giancarlo Stanton out for an extended period of time, the Yankees find themselves in a situation where a Ben Rice breakout could alter the course of their 2025 season.
Why Ben Rice’s Underlying Data Gives the Yankees Hope For 2025
The Yankees are in a weird bind with their offense as without Giancarlo Stanton they lose a good bit of the HR power that they were projected to have this season. Any time you have Aaron Judge in the middle of your offense you can score runs, but we’ve seen how a below-average supporting cast can result in an offense completely incapable of doing anything in the run-scoring department as recently as 2023.
Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera, Jasson Dominguez, Paul Goldschmidt, and Ben Rice are all massive question marks on offense who could have impressive seasons or completely fall flat. Not all of them will reach their potential at the plate, but if enough of them do the Yankees could end up winning more games than people think. Rice has perhaps had the most encouraging Spring Training of that group despite having the worst OPS of that group, as he’s made a lot of contact and done damage when he has made contact.
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With the way that Ben Rice is crushing the baseball thus far in Spring Training while making lots of contact and keeping the ball in the air, I have a hard time caring about his OPS to this point. It’s completely possible for a hitter to get unlucky over nine games, especially in an environment as casual as Spring Training where games don’t matter at all.
The Yankees would also be foolish to ignore Ben Rice’s .340 xwOBA from last season, especially with how loudly they’ve signaled that they have faith in him. Austin Wells went through a similarly unlucky stretch to begin his season, and the team chose to continue playing him day in and day out until he made the necessary adjustments needed to have success.
It worked brilliantly, and the Yankees now have a star-caliber catcher who can anchor the position down for the next half-decade if he continues to play at this pace. Ben Rice has even more upside offensively than Austin Wells does in my opinion as someone who doesn’t have to play every day at catcher, has displayed more raw power, and is an elite-level swing decision-maker.
We could see Ben Rice put up big numbers in 2025, as ZiPS believes he’ll post a 114 wRC+, but they have an 80th Percentile projection of a 129 OPS+, which would certainly galvanize this offense. For context, only Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Jazz Chisholm have higher 80th Percentile projections in terms of OPS+.