At the very least, Ben Rice will be in a lineage with Kevin Maas, Shane Spencer and Shelley Duncan — Yankees prospects who arrived like meteors and never came close to matching their initial burst of power.
If anything, then Rice will play a key role for the 2024 Yankees, which may be the best moment of the season and certainly the biggest stress reliever from a struggling team.
But the on-balance approach and smooth easy swing with surprising heft create a chance to envision more than just a quick Rice. He has taken basically one good at-bat after another since his June 18 debut. And on Saturday, with the Yankees coming off the most disheartening loss of the season, playing the worst sustained ball in many years and all kinds of terrible questions about focus and hustle percolating, Rice for at least one day replaced anxiety with exultation. From the first at-bat to the last, Rice turned the subject (best one day) from the MLB-worst 4-14 run to a 14-4 rout of the Red Sox.
Rice became the first Yankees rookie with a three-homer game. He became the first Yankees rookie since July 23, 1925, to drive in seven runs. It was an Ivy League product (Columbia) named Lou Gehrig, who in April of the season stepped into first base after veteran left fielder Wally Pipp suffered a head injury and never regained his job. Rice is an Ivy League product (Dartmouth) who stepped in at first base after veteran swingman Anthony Rizzo was out after suffering a broken right wrist on June 16.
Now check the perspective. When Maas set the record for the fewest homer totals in a 1990 rookie campaign while filling in for an injured Don Mattingly, the Yankees began doing gymnastics on how the two could coexist in the future. It’s so far from here to there. Rizzo holds an important leadership position in the Yankee ecosystem.
But Rizzo has never been good and the earliest he could be back from IL 60 days is August 16th. So Rice will get plenty of opportunities to show he’s the right answer in 2024 — and beyond. Because a cheap high-end lefty bat that provides skill and on-base power will allow the Yankees to more aggressively spend elsewhere (fill in here whatever you imagine the price for Hal Steinbrenner to retain Juan Soto).
That’s all on the way. In the present, the Yankees entered struggling in every phase and came off 5-3, 10-inning loss there to Boston which were one attack from winning and lost in the lack of attention to details and absent energy.
The hope is that the ace, Gerrit Cole, can start to turn this tide. But the Red Sox did for four-plus innings against Cole what they did in the ninth inning on Saturday in forcing a blown save on Clay Holmes – extending the at-bat, soaring the pitch count and capitalizing on his mistakes. Thus, the Yankees will need a hero from the opposite side of the seniority and salary scale.
Rice, in his 17th game and third as a leadoff hitter, homered to open the first and then hit a 406-foot three-run homer off Chase Anderson in the fifth and seventh innings – the first to open the game and then the highlight of what was. Aaron Boone labeled it a “legendary day.” At that time from the on-deck circle, Aaron Judge urged the two fans to grow louder and Rice came out of the dugout as Soto stepped out of the batters box. And Rice, still on a high, was confused for the first time before he found the opening of the dugout to bring a huge standing ovation and the Yanks’ happiest moment in weeks.
“Obviously, we’re going to experience it and start looking for any success,” Cole said, “I think it’s bigger than that. It’s a historic day, a magical day.”
Rice grew up a Yankee fan in the Boston suburbs and said he expects the Yankees or Red Sox to draft him in 2021 — the Yanks do the best job of understanding players who won’t play college ball in 2020-21 like Ivy. The season is bad because of COVID.
Bat who has a calling card up the minor league ranks, and only watched the first 60 plate appearances of his MLB career, Rice was almost unbalanced and deceived. He has acumen for whether to strike or not. Boone used the term “slow heart rate.” The game doesn’t seem to be moving too fast for him. The size of the Yankees and the big crowds and major league pitching didn’t seem to faze him. Nor has lost that has enveloped the term Yankee.
And when the Yankees needed a hero there to try to fight the mounting negativity, Rice delivered three huge blows. At least he joins Maas, Spencer and Duncan. But that swing, that approach and that serenity in the storm, it makes you wonder if this could be way more than where the flash meets the pan.
