Coming into the season, the ZiPS projections typically noticed the Yankees as having decrease divisional odds than standings primarily based on different projection methods and methodologies. One of many greatest causes for that was, paradoxically, among the finest issues a baseball workforce can possess: Aaron Choose 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 completely brutal hit any time Choose was absent. Within the system’s present season simulations, that impact has been mitigated considerably by the improved projections of 1 man: first baseman Ben Rice.
Choose’s courtroom is a terrifying dystopia by which defendant pitchers discover scant justice and nearly certain punishment. And whereas this choose is usually content material to deal with executions himself, it’s Rice who has been working the guillotine essentially the most incessantly in 2026. Via the primary 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 will have an OPS nearing 1.300, variety of issues have in all probability gone your method, 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 on the large league stage. However what makes Rice’s season so wonderful is that even in case you take among the helium out of his seasonal line, it nonetheless tells the story of a batter who is likely to be rising as certainly one of baseball’s elite offensive abilities.
ZiPS has a built-in instrument that estimates a participant’s line purely from StatCast information, and unsurprisingly, Rice’s BABIP comes down significantly when wanting on the superior information, with that .500 BABIP turning into a mere .318 BABIP. However that’s not sufficient to take the oomph out of his season-to-date efficiency, not by an extended shot. While you tabulate the ZiPS changes for BABIP, in addition to his house run, stroll, and strikeout charges, Rice’s line nonetheless comes out as a sturdy .277/.392/.629, good for a 1.021 OPS. To place a 1.021 OPS in context, amongst qualifiers, that might have trailed solely Choose in 2025, and solely Choose 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 Bellinger, and Nelson Cruz all managed it.
After all, Rice is unlikely to be fairly this good over the course of a full season. Baseball is a sport of adjustment and re-adjustment, and the volatility of gamers’ small-sample numbers strongly helps the thought of there being vital ebb and movement of their “true expertise,” as summary an idea as that could be. Rice can’t sustain that BABIP, however hitting the ball actually laborious is a vital element of prolonged success for an influence hitter. He was hardly a slouch final yr, with a 55.8% hard-hit fee (seventh in baseball). However this yr, that’s improved to 70.0% within 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 fee is tough to attain. Of the 11,990 runs of 30 balls in play in 2025, solely 128 had a hard-hit fee 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, Choose, Juan Soto), gamers with a historical past of hitting balls very laborious (Kyle Schwarber, Manny Machado), and, surprisingly, Michael Harris II. One of many causes that some of these numbers have confirmed helpful, particularly when projecting hitters, is that they don’t show the identical stage of volatility that the extra conventional stats do. And what’s extra, Rice has achieved this whereas pitchers have proven him larger respect, throwing considerably fewer fastballs, and fewer pitches within the strike zone, than in 2025.
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Rice’s development 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 enhance essentially the most in the course of the 2025 season. Rice ranked sixth among the many hitters by way of the most important enchancment. He was projected for a 128 wRC+ coming into this season, however his rest-of-season wRC+ has already jumped to 137. The in-season mannequin is easier than the total ZiPS mannequin (in any other case it couldn’t run day-after-day), and with StatCast information included, ZiPS now sees Rice as a 143-wRC+ hitter the remainder of the way in which. That’s the seventh-best rest-of-season wRC+ projection in ZiPS.
Operating the total ZiPS mannequin for the primary three weeks of the season, Rice has had the second-largest bump in projected wRC+ of any hitter in baseball (the most important change is Jordan Walker’s). As you would possibly anticipate, that’s been sufficient to meaningfully shift his long-term trajectory into an much more optimistic course than earlier than:
ZiPS Projection – Ben Rice
| Yr | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | .258 | .352 | .524 | 450 | 79 | 116 | 26 | 2 | 30 | 86 | 60 | 115 | 5 | 142 | 3.6 |
| 2028 | .257 | .352 | .515 | 452 | 79 | 116 | 26 | 2 | 29 | 84 | 61 | 114 | 5 | 139 | 3.4 |
| 2029 | .252 | .348 | .500 | 448 | 77 | 113 | 25 | 1 | 28 | 80 | 60 | 112 | 4 | 134 | 3.1 |
| 2030 | .248 | .345 | .479 | 436 | 73 | 108 | 24 | 1 | 25 | 75 | 59 | 110 | 4 | 128 | 2.7 |
| 2031 | .242 | .339 | .460 | 417 | 67 | 101 | 23 | 1 | 22 | 68 | 56 | 106 | 3 | 121 | 2.1 |
Coming into 2026, within the ZiPS seasonal simulations by which Choose 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 workforce’s sub-.500 seasons coming in these simulation runs. However with the up to date projections, the Yankees now mission to have an above-average offense about two-thirds of the time, 67.1%, when Choose misses that many video games. And that’s solely attributable to Rice’s enhancements; if I inform ZiPS to make use of Rice’s preseason projection, the quantity drops right down to 56.9%.
For those who’re a fan of one other workforce within the AL East, as I’m (Baltimore Orioles), you’ve in all probability been ready for Rice to come back crashing again to Earth. Given how he’s hit in 2026, nonetheless, I concern we’ll should pin our collective hopes on different sources of Yankees misfortune. Ben Rice’s energy is actual and it’s spectacular.