Ben Rice Lays Waste to the American League

Coming into the season, ZiPS projections generally saw the Yankees as having lower odds than the standings based on other projection systems and methods. One of the biggest reasons for that was, ironically, one of the best things a baseball team can have: Aaron Judge with a signed contract. As ZiPS tried to simulate the effects of injuries, including season-ending ones, the Yankees’ offense took a beating whenever Judge was out. In the system’s current season simulations, that effect has been somewhat mitigated by the improved projection of one individual: first baseman Ben Rice.

The judge’s court is a terrifying dystopia where accused criminals receive little justice and certain punishment. And while this judge is usually content to handle the execution himself, it was Rice who used the guillotine more often in 2026. Through the first three weeks of the season, Rice has posted a .362/.500/.745 line, good for a league-leading 241 wRC+, and is already up to 1-WAR.

Naturally, if you have an OPS approaching 1.300, a good number of things have probably gone your way, certainly more than against you. Rice’s batting average, fourth in baseball among hitters, has naturally helped a .500 BABIP, which should still prove sustainable at the major league level. But what makes Rice’s season so great is that even if you take the helium out of his streak, it still tells the story of a hitter who may emerge as one of baseball’s top offensive talents.

ZiPS has a built-in tool that estimates a player’s line from StatCast data, and not surprisingly, Rice’s BABIP drops significantly when looking at the updated data, that .500 BABIP becomes just a .318 BABIP. But that’s not enough to take the oomph out of his season performance so far, not by a long shot. When you tabulate the ZiPS adjustment for BABIP, along with his home runs, walks, and strikeout rate, Rice’s line still comes out as a potent .277/.392/.629, good for a 1.021 OPS. Putting a 1.021 OPS in the position, among relievers, would be second only to Judge in 2025, and only Judge and Shohei Ohtani in 2024. The last time a non-Cooperstown starter had a better OPS in a full season was back in 2019, when Christian Yelich, Cody Bellinger did it all.

Of course, Rice probably won’t be this good over the course of a full season. Baseball is a game of adjustment and re-adjustment, and the volatility of small sample numbers of players strongly supports the idea of ​​a significant ebb and flow in their “real talent,” as vague a notion as it may be. Rice can’t keep up with that BABIP, but hitting the ball hard is a key factor in a power hitter’s increased success. He was no slouch last year, with a 55.8% strikeout rate (seventh in baseball). But this year, that improved to 70.0% at first, followed by Fernando Tatis Jr. only, and his average exit velocity of 96.7 mph ranked fourth in baseball.

Even if only 30 balls are played, 70% of the hitting rate is difficult to achieve. Of the 11,990 30-ball runs played in 2025, only 128 had a strike rate higher than Rice’s 70%. The list of 17 players who have won the game at any point in 2025 is a who’s who of superstars (Ohtani, Judge, Juan Soto), hitters (Kyle Schwarber, Manny Machado), and, surprisingly, Michael Harris II. One of the reasons these types of numbers seem so useful, especially when it comes to predicting hitters, is that they don’t show the same level of variability that traditional statistics do. And what’s more, Rice accomplished this while the Raiders showed him a lot of respect, throwing far fewer fastballs, and fewer pitches in the strike zone, than in 2025.

Rice’s style arrow was already firmly pointing upwards. A few months ago, I ran the numbers to see which players saw their 2026 predictions improve the most in the 2025 season. Rice ranks sixth among batsmen in terms of greatest improvement. He’s projected for a 128+ wRC+ entering this season, but his offseason wRC+ has already jumped to 137. The in-season model is simpler than the full ZiPS model (otherwise it wouldn’t work every day), and with StatCast data included, ZiPS now sees Rice as Rice 143-wRC + hit all the way. That’s the seventh-best wRC+ projection of the season on ZiPS.

Using the full ZiPS model through the first three weeks of the season, Rice had the second-largest bump in projected wRC+ of any hitter in baseball (Jordan Walker’s biggest change). As you might expect, that’s enough to change his long-term direction into an even better direction than before:

Going into 2026, in ZiPS season averages where Judge ended up with 300 plate appearances or fewer, the Yankees had an above-average offense 57.0% of the time, with 92% of the team’s sub-.500 seasons coming in that simulation run. But with the revised projections, the Yankees now project to have an above-average offense about two-thirds of the time, 67.1%, when Judge misses that many games. And that’s only because of Rice’s development; if I tell ZiPS to use Rice’s preseason projection, the number drops to 56.9%.

If you’re a fan of another team in the AL East, like I am (Baltimore Orioles), you probably expected Rice to crash back into Earth. Given the way he’s pitched in 2026, however, I’m afraid we’ll have to pin our collective hopes on other sources of Yankees misfortune. Ben Rice’s powers are real and amazing.