Yankees At-Bat of the Week: Ben Rice (9/21)

Simply put, the Yankees entered the final game against the Orioles on Sunday needing a win. With their remaining regular season dwindling and the Blue Jays still holding onto first in the AL East, there was simply no excuse not to take three out of four from the last-place Orioles. The whole point of making it through their recently-completed dozen game gauntlet was that a golden opportunity awaited them on the other side — 10 games against Baltimore and the White Sox where the Bombers had a real chance to make a final sprint trying to chase down the Jays. A series split was unacceptable — the playoffs may not yet have started but it’s still must-win mode for New York from there on out.

That made their subsequent shutout by Kyle Bradish for the first five innings an even more excruciating watch. It was the type of no-show on getaway day we’ve come to expect from the offense over the last handful of seasons — the kind you can sort of get away with in the middle of the season but not at all in the final week with the division lead within grasp. Ben Rice made up the entirety of their offense with three hits in regulation including the game-tying RBI single in the sixth. The bullpen pitched lights out after another strong start by Cam Schlittler to send this game to extra innings, where Rice would play the hero once more.

As soon as the game went to extras, it was like a collective switch flipped for the whole lineup. The quality of their ABs jumped relative to the poor swing decisions they were making in regulation — in other words it felt like the approach you’d see from a team in a do-or-die postseason game, a good sign from a team that has big aspirations for the playoffs. Oriole reliever Kade Strowd struck out the side in the ninth, but he issued a leadoff walk to Aaron Judge in the tenth, and he was immediately replaced by stand-in closer Keegan Akin. He promptly ceded a single to Cody Bellinger to load the bases with no outs with the Yankees’ lone threat on the day Rice stepping to the plate.

Rice had absolutely crushed the fastball all day long, two of his three hits in regulation coming against the heater. Therefore, it is no surprise that Akin would start Rice off with a first pitch slider hoping the hitter would guess wrong and expand the zone.

This is a pretty dang good slider from Akin, the pitch hovering in the zone for a long time before taking a last minute right hand turn. However, Rice spits all over it, at no point looking even vaguely tempted to offer at this chase pitch, meaning he must have read it well out of the pitcher’s hand.

After witnessing Rice’s complete disinterest in the previous pitch, Akin senses an opportunity to steal a called strike to get back into the count. Rice appears to be sitting on something inside, so if he can command a fastball to the outside edge, it’s a safe bet that Rice won’t swing.

Akin executes his pitch to perfection and earns the called strike to level the count. It’s not even a bad take by Rice — this pitch has an initial aiming point that’s even farther outside than the previous pitch that Rice watched break away for a ball. The problem is that this time it’s a four-seamer whose arm-side movement brings it back across the outer edge of the plate.

Now that Akin has established that he can locate his fastball away for a called strike, this means that chase slider away is back in business, Rice now forced to respect pitches on the outer half. Akin wastes no time exploiting this advantage that he has created.

Hoo boy did Rice catch a lucky break here. This slider is even better than the first one Akin threw, still looking like a strike out of the hand but a little lower and a littler farther outside. Rice chases this time and is just able to poke the ball down the third base line. Fortunately for him and the Yankees, it skirts foul just as the fielder scoops it, and Rice is able to avoid a potentially deflating double play.

Despite getting the desired outcome on the previous pitch — a chase and weak contact — Akin moves off of the slider as he attempts to strike Rice out with an elevated four-seamer.

Akin leaves this heater middle-middle and Rice does exactly what a major league hitter is supposed to do with that mistake pitch in a pitcher’s count. He smokes an absolute missile into the seats in right-center for the go-ahead grand slam, quadrupling his team’s run output from the first nine innings. They say that in the big leagues, you always have to be ready to hit the fastball, and Rice was certainly ready despite chasing a well-executed slider the prior pitch.

Here’s the full AB:

There is no overstating how important Ben Rice’s emergence as a lineup mainstay has been for the Yankees. They infamously went three months without their first baseman hitting a home run last season, but now it looks like they have a young, cost controlled, and impactful slugger to hold down first for years to come. More importantly to this year, he alongside the likes of Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham have given the Yankees a deeper lineup of above-average hitters when too often last year, much of the burden was placed on Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. In Rice, they now have another potential game winner on any given night.