Ben Rice Is Laying Waste to the American League

Coming into the season, the ZiPS projections typically noticed the Yankees as having decrease divisional odds than standings based mostly on different projection programs and methodologies. One of the greatest causes for that was, paradoxically, one in all the greatest issues a baseball crew can possess: Aaron Judge with a signed contract. Since ZiPS makes an attempt to simulate the results of accidents, together with season-ending ones, the Yankees offense took a fully brutal hit any time Judge was absent. In the system’s present season simulations, that impact has been mitigated considerably by the improved projections of 1 man: first baseman Ben Rice.

Judge’s courtroom is a terrifying dystopia wherein defendant pitchers discover scant justice and virtually certain punishment. And whereas this decide is often content material to deal with executions himself, it is Rice who has been working the guillotine the most ceaselessly in 2026. Through the first three weeks of the season, Rice has put up a .362/.500/.745 line, good for a league-leading 241 wRC+, and has already hit the 1-WAR mark.

Naturally, when you could have an OPS nearing 1.300, an excellent variety of issues have in all probability gone your means, actually greater than have gone in opposition to you. Rice’s batting common, fourth in baseball amongst qualifiers, is of course helped rather a lot by a .500 BABIP, which has but to show sustainable at the large league degree. But what makes Rice’s season so superb is that even in the event you take a few of the helium out of his seasonal line, it nonetheless tells the story of a batter who is likely to be rising as one in all baseball’s elite offensive skills.

ZiPS has a built-in instrument that estimates a participant’s line purely from StatCast knowledge, and unsurprisingly, Rice’s BABIP comes down significantly when taking a look at the superior knowledge, with that .500 BABIP turning into a mere .318 BABIP. But that is not sufficient to take the oomph out of his season-to-date efficiency, not by a protracted shot. When you tabulate the ZiPS changes for BABIP, in addition to his dwelling run, stroll, and strikeout charges, Rice’s line nonetheless comes out as a strong .277/.392/.629, good for a 1.021 OPS. To put a 1.021 OPS in context, amongst qualifiers, that may have trailed solely Judge in 2025, and solely Judge and Shohei Ohtani in 2024. The final time a participant who wasn’t clearly headed to Cooperstown had a greater OPS in a full season was again in 2019, when Christian Yelich, Cody Bellingerand Nelson Cruz all managed it.

Of course, Rice is unlikely to be fairly this good over the course of a full season. Baseball is a recreation of adjustment and re-adjustment, and the volatility of gamers’ small-sample numbers strongly helps the concept of ​​there being vital ebb and circulation of their “true talent,” as summary an idea as that could be. Rice cannot sustain that BABIP, however hitting the ball actually arduous is an important part of prolonged success for an influence hitter. He was hardly a slouch final yr, with a 55.8% hard-hit charge (seventh in baseball). But this yr, that is improved to 70.0% in the early going, trailing solely Fernando Tatis Jr.and his 96.7 mph common exit velocity ranks fourth in baseball.

Even with simply 30 balls in play, a 70% hard-hit charge is tough to obtain. Of the 11,990 runs of 30 balls in play in 2025, solely 128 had a hard-hit charge larger than Rice’s 70%. The record of 17 gamers who managed the feat at any level in 2025 is a who’s who of superstars (Ohtani, Judge, Juan Soto), gamers with a historical past of hitting balls very arduous (Kyle Schwarber, Manny Machado), and, surprisingly, Michael Harris II. One of the causes that some of these numbers have confirmed helpful, particularly when projecting hitters, is that they do not show the identical degree of volatility that the extra conventional stats do. And what’s extra, Rice has completed this whereas pitchers have proven him larger respect, throwing considerably fewer fastballs, and fewer pitches in the strike zone, than in 2025.

Rice’s pattern arrow was already firmly pointing up. A few months in the past, I ran the numbers to see which gamers had seen their 2026 forecasts improve the most during the 2025 season. Rice ranked sixth amongst the hitters by way of the largest enchancment. He was projected for a 128 wRC+ getting into this season, however his rest-of-season wRC+ has already jumped to 137. The in-season mannequin is easier than the full ZiPS mannequin (in any other case it could not run day-after-day), and with StatCast knowledge included, ZiPS now sees Rice as a 143-wRC+ hitter the remainder of the means. That’s the seventh-best rest-of-season wRC+ projection in ZiPS.

Running the full ZiPS mannequin for the first three weeks of the season, Rice has had the second-largest bump in projected wRC+ of any hitter in baseball (the greatest change is Jordan Walker‘s). As you may count on, that is been sufficient to meaningfully shift his long-term trajectory into an much more constructive route than earlier than:

Coming into 2026, in the ZiPS seasonal simulations wherein Judge ended up with 300 or fewer plate appearances, the Yankees solely had an above-average offense 57.0% of the time, with 92% of the crew’s sub-.500 seasons coming in these simulation runs. But with the up to date projections, the Yankees now undertaking to have an above-average offense about two-thirds of the time, 67.1%, when Judge misses that many video games. And that is solely attributable to Rice’s enhancements; if I inform ZiPS to use Rice’s preseason projection, the quantity drops down to 56.9%.

If you are a fan of one other crew in the AL East, as I’m (Baltimore Orioles), you have in all probability been ready for Rice to come crashing again to Earth. Given how he is hit in 2026, nonetheless, I worry we’ll have to pin our collective hopes on different sources of Yankees misfortune. Ben Rice’s energy is actual and it’s spectacular.