NEW YORK -- Ben Rice places stock in consistency, believing that routines lead to success. He takes it seriously, sticking to the same timeline and actions in the batting cage each day. The Yankees star even insists upon eating the same breakfast: scrambled eggs and avocado toast.
With results like this, there’s no reason to change. Rice savored what he said may have been one of the best games of his career on Tuesday, homering twice and driving in six runs in a 9-0 victory over the Red Sox in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium.
“It's a long season. I think you find success by just being consistent every day,” Rice said. “All the consistency that you had in the regular season, you’ve just got to carry it right over into the postseason. So I approached it like any other game, and do the things that helped you over 162.”
Rice got the Yankees into the hit column with a first-inning double, then greeted Erik Miller with a fifth-inning blast into Monument Park that staked fellow Massachusetts native Cam Schlittler to a two-run lead.
Schlittler needed no more support, striking out 10 over 6 1/3 scoreless innings, but the Yankees piled on late anyway. Rice lined a run-scoring single in the seventh, then deposited a grand slam into the right-field bullpen off Brayan Bello in the eighth.
“Ben is Mr. Consistency, on top of being an Ivy League graduate, so he’s incredibly smart,” said outfielder Spencer Jones. “He doesn’t take himself too seriously; he’s always looking for ways to improve. He’s always looking at film, looking at different things. He’s trying to find anything that can give him an edge.”
Rice’s six RBIs matched the most by a Yankee in a postseason game, and his grand slam was the 16th by a Yankee in the postseason.
Performances of that caliber come as little surprise to Rice’s teammates, who have marveled at his work ethic throughout an All-Star campaign that saw the 27-year-old belt a career-high 41 homers.
“He’s very studious -- Dartmouth guy, you know?” Cody Bellinger said. “The thing I love about baseball is, we’re all so different in how we approach it. But we have good dialogue, and today was pretty spectacular.”
Jones, who lockers next to Rice, said his teammate “loves to talk about” all of the data points he finds in his scouting deep-dives. But there’s also time for fun.
“We do daily phone games and have a little competition between the two of us,” Jones said. “We talk about whatever -- food, New York City apartments, everything.”
In the early portion of this season, Rice and captain Aaron Judge engaged in a playful back-and-forth for the team home run lead. Judge even teased Rice, saying that he refused to let the young slugger eclipse him.
A fractured right rib changed those plans, costing Judge most of the season while increasing the spotlight on Rice, who lost his chief protector in the lineup. While Rice slumped at times, he made necessary adjustments and came into the postseason swinging a hot bat.
“It was a great offensive season, and obviously we needed it,” manager Aaron Boone said. “There were times this year where we were really offensively challenged to score some runs. There’s that two-month stretch where it was rough, and Benny went through his stretch too.
“That's the thing you love to see. For as great a year as he had, he had a stretch there for a month where it was a grind and a struggle, but he got himself out of it. He really finished the last month with a flurry, and obviously carried it in here the first game of the postseason.”
That, Rice said, can be directly traced to his rigid mindset.
“When it starts to get hard, that's all the more reason to be consistent,” Rice said. “You've got to lean on your everyday routine, your everyday approach, your preparation. All of that is really for the hard times. You lean on that. That's the backbone of your season.”
Rice clearly appreciated and enjoyed Tuesday’s performance, which he said was “definitely up there” among the best days of his career thus far. But he also knows what got him there, which is why everyone knows exactly what he’ll do Wednesday morning.
“Same breakfast every day. Same routine in the cage every day,” Rice said. “The whole timeline of the day is the same; really, just everything. The consistency just leaves you asking yourself fewer questions throughout the day. You just go out there and say, ‘OK, this is what I do.’”