Ben Rice -- a young guy out of Massachusetts, an Ivy League grad from Dartmouth -- is a left-handed power hitter for the Yankees. He is all that in a place -- Yankee Stadium -- built for left-handed power hitters because of a right-field porch that looks close enough from home plate to reach out and touch. You know how many hitters like this have come out of the Yankees' farm system since Don Mattingly? Hardly any.
Mattingly hit 30 or more home runs three times for the Yankees back in the '80s, long before the team moved across 161st Street to the new Stadium. After Mattingly, the team has developed one 30-plus lefty homer guy since, and that was Robinson Canó, who did it once before leaving for Seattle as a free agent.
But now Rice -- still just 27, a 12th round Draft pick five years ago -- sure has a chance to do it this season. A year ago, in 138 games, Rice hit 26 home runs for the Yankees. Already this season, he has hit three, the same number as Aaron Judge had hit going into Tuesday night’s Athletics-Yankees game.
In the short season of 2026, Rice has been the Yankees' best all-around hitter. Giancarlo Stanton, such an important piece for this Yankees team, took a .394 batting average into the A’s game at the Stadium, but has hit just one home run so far. Rice has his three, is leading the team with 11 RBIs and is sporting a fancy .370 average of his own.
He comes out of Cohasset, Mass., where he grew up a Yankees fan in Red Sox Nation. If that weren’t painful enough for the Sox, who have all the problems in the world these days, the young guy pitching like the Yankees’ real ace right now -- Cam Schlittler -- comes out of Walpole, Mass., perhaps a half-hour away from Cohasset, and only 30 miles from Fenway Park.
The Yankees have imported lefty power guys, of course. They did it with Tino Martinez, who replaced Mattingly at first base. They brought in Jason Giambi later, and Curtis Granderson, who hit more than 40 homers twice as a Yankee. Anthony Rizzo hit 32 as a Yankee not long ago, and now they have Cody Bellinger, who once hit 47 homers in a season for the Dodgers and who nearly got to 30 as a Yankee last year. But their system hasn’t produced one of its own like that lately, not until Rice, playing the same position that Mattingly and Tino did before him.
In so many ways, it means that Rice appears to be in exactly the right place at the right time for the New York Yankees.
I asked David Cone -- now broadcasting Yankees games for the YES Network after having also done Sunday Night Baseball games for ESPN for years -- about Rice on Monday, just because Cone has had a ringside seat for what the young man has been doing since getting to the big leagues. This is a player versatile enough, incidentally, to have also started 26 games at catcher a year ago.
“He is a monster in the batter’s box,” Cone said. “This is a very smart kid who understands how to build his swing for Yankee Stadium. His mechanics are impressive. No sway, completely stacked and powerful swing. Light-tower power.”
Cone was such a gifted and creative pitcher in his time, one who not only pitched a perfect game for the Yankees once, but did it on Yogi Berra Day with Don Larsen in attendance at the Stadium. He played with Mattingly at the end of Mattingly’s career, then won a World Series as a teammate of Martinez’s.
I asked Cone what he thinks Rice’s ceiling might be, even having only played nearly 200 games for the Yankees so far.
Cone: “Forty-plus homers. High-on base. All-Star.”
Cone was then asked how he would have approached pitching to the kind of young hitter we had been discussing, and what he’s seeing from pitchers working against Rice now.
“He is closing the gap on pitches moving into him,” Cone said. “He’s dangerous if you miss on the inner half, and has already made great adjustments to how they were pitching him in the past.”
Finally Cone added:
“I love the kid.”
It is still early in the game for Rice, early in his second full season as a Yankee. But Yankees fans have come to love him, too. And when playing in his first postseason last October, he even hit his first postseason homer in a Wild Card Series. Against the Red Sox.
Here is how Rice’s manager, Aaron Boone, described Rice before this season even began:
“A fearsome left-handed, middle-of-the-order hitter. ... This is who he is.”
Rice has now picked up right where he left off at the end of the 2025 season. There has been much talk around the Yankees about how his defense at first base continues to improve. But what they love the most about him is left-handed power in a place built for that kind of power. Cone says he thinks Rice has a chance to go for 40 if he stays healthy. You know who the last homegrown left-handed hitter to do that for the Yankees?
Another Ivy Leaguer. Out of Columbia University. Guy named Gehrig.