The rare skill set that could carry Rice to stardom in '26

There’s a big reason the Yankees’ offseason shopping list didn’t include a star first baseman. They might already have one in house.

While the spot didn’t officially open up until Paul Goldschmidt reached free agency in November, Ben Rice effectively became the Yankees’ starting first baseman the moment their 2025 season ended with an ALDS loss to the Blue Jays.

The 26-year-old slugger put together a breakout 2025 campaign while splitting his time between first base, DH and catcher. Now, the Bronx Bombers are betting that he can become a permanent fixture at first, a position that largely has been a revolving door for the franchise since Mark Teixeira's career came to an end.

Rice’s 2025 stats -- including 26 homers and a 131 OPS+ over 530 plate appearances -- were strong enough, but they only tell part of the story. When we start to dig into the underlying skill set behind those numbers, it becomes clearer why the Yankees had no problem eschewing this year’s first-base market, which featured big names such as Pete Alonso, Josh Naylor, Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto.

To better understand what Rice brings to the table, his Baseball Savant page is a good place to start. Rice’s percentile rankings immediately stand out and underscore his power potential -- he consistently hit the ball hard and in the air this past season, ranking in the 97th percentile in hard-hit rate, the 90th percentile in sweet-spot rate and the 92nd percentile in barrel rate. Even better, he didn’t have to sacrifice contact to do it.

Rice recorded an 18.9% strikeout rate in 2025, which was more than three percentage points lower than the MLB average (22.2%) and placed him in the 65th percentile among qualifiers. His 21.2% whiff rate ranked in the 71st percentile.

That mix of power and contact is rarer than you might realize.

We now have 11 seasons of data since Statcast tracking began in 2015. Excluding the shortened 2020 campaign, only 12 hitters (19 instances) have had a qualifying season where they ranked in the 90th percentile or better in hard-hit rate, the 90th percentile or better in barrel rate and the 60th percentile or better in strikeout rate. Rice is one of them.

It’s a good group to be in. Every player on the list other than Rice has made three or more All-Star teams and notched at least one top-three finish in his league’s MVP Award voting. Five have won MVP honors. One is in the Hall of Fame already. Here’s the full list.

Qualifiers in single season since 2015 who ranked in:

90th percentile or better in hard-hit rate
90th percentile or better in barrel rate
60th percentile or better in strikeout rate

• Yordan Alvarez (2024, ’23, ’22)
• Ronald Acuña Jr. (2023)
• José Bautista (2015)
• Mookie Betts (2018)
• Miguel Cabrera (2015, ’16)
• Josh Donaldson (2016)
• Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (2021, ’24)
• David Ortiz (2015, ’16)
• Ben Rice (2025)
• Corey Seager (2023, ’24)
• Juan Soto (2024, ’25)
• Christian Yelich (2019)

That list also makes it clear how difficult it is to maintain that kind of profile over the long haul -- only a handful of those hitters managed to hit the three aforementioned benchmarks in a single season more than once.

Still, the fact that Rice even did it once bodes well for his outlook, especially when you take these foundational traits into account.

1. He controls the strike zone. Rice came to the Majors with an advanced grasp of the zone two years ago and didn't stray from that approach in his second season. His 21.2% chase rate ranked in the 91st percentile in 2025.

Rice was also selective on pitches in the zone this past season, but not to the point of passivity. And when he did cut loose, he rarely came up empty, notching an above-average zone-contact rate (86.0%). Moreover, he had a run value of +12 on pitches in the heart of the plate, doing what an elite hitter is supposed to do against the juiciest offerings.

2. He has a fast, efficient swing. It's also encouraging that Rice doesn’t need to swing out of his shoes to hit for power. Instead, he swings with a type of controlled fury that allows him to consistently blast the baseball, and we don’t just mean that in a colloquial sense. To put it as simply as we can, a *blast* is a Statcast metric that demonstrates a batter’s ability to square up a ball -- which means to attain at least 80% of the maximum possible exit velocity available, given the speed of your swing and the pitch -- while also swinging with plus bat speed.

Why does it matter? Because since bat-tracking began in 2023, MLB hitters have slugged .850 points higher on blasts than on non-blasts. In 2025, only a few hitters produced blasts at a higher clip than Rice.

Highest blast rate per swing, 2025
Minimum 500 competitive swings

1. Juan Soto: 21.6%
2. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 20.4%
3. Yandy Díaz: 19.7%
4. Ben Rice: 19.4%
5. Maikel Garcia: 18.4%
   MLB average: 11.2%

3. He maximizes his chances to hit for power by pulling the ball. Pulled air contact is the most reliable path to slugging. It's how hitters such as Mookie Betts, José Ramírez, Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Francisco Lindor who lack prototypical size and bat speed have consistently managed to hit the ball out of the park during their careers.

But that approach isn't only for undersized sluggers. Mashers like Kyle Schwarber and Cal Raleigh also benefit from pulling the ball in the air consistently. The same holds true for Rice, particularly when factoring in how favorable Yankee Stadium is to left-handed pull power.

Rice had a 25.2% pulled airball rate in 2025, tied for 28th highest among the 274 hitters with at least 200 batted balls. Relatedly, 40 of his 58 extra-base hits and 20 of his 26 home runs came to his pull side, and he slugged .884 overall on pulled batted balls.

There’s going to be plenty of pressure on Rice to deliver in 2026, especially if the Yankees don’t bring back free-agent outfielder Cody Bellinger or land a comparable replacement. Questions about his defense add another layer of scrutiny.

He’ll enter the season as the least experienced first baseman in a division that already featured Guerrero and Díaz and has gained Alonso and Willson Contreras.

However, everything we saw from him at the plate this past season suggests he's up to the task.