Ben Rice keeps making the same point in louder and louder ways: the Yankees’ offense has leaned on him far more than the MVP race seems willing to admit.
With Aaron Judge missing most of the season, the American League MVP conversation has opened up, and Houston’s Yordan Álvarez has sat near the front for much of it. New York has also seen Cam Schlittler get more attention lately. But Rice has put together the kind of year that should have him much closer to the center of the debate.
He already looked like a breakout player last season. This year, he has taken another step.
Aaron Boone even predicted Rice would hit 39 home runs, and that was exactly where he stood when the Yankees played the Tampa Bay Rays on September 23, with five games left on the schedule. With both clubs already locked into their playoff situations, it looked like Rice might finish right there.
Instead, he went past his manager’s number in a hurry. Rice opened the bottom of the first with a solo home run, then came back in the bottom of the fourth and launched another leadoff shot. That pushed him to 41 homers and dropped him into a very small corner of Yankees history.
His 40th homer of the season placed him among just eight Yankees age 27 or younger to reach that mark in a year. The others are Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Roger Maris, Aaron Judge, and Juan Soto.
That’s the kind of company that tells you how real the season has been. And it also explains why Rice deserves far more attention than he’s getting.
MLB.com’s latest awards poll has him fifth, behind Álvarez, Junior Caminero, Bobby Witt Jr., and Schlittler. That ranking feels off in a few spots.
Álvarez has had a strong season, but the idea that he has been Judge-like doesn’t hold up. Through September 23, he owned a 181 wRC+, which is still more than 20 points below Judge’s 203 last season. That matters because Álvarez is trying to become the first full-time DH to win the award other than Shohei Ohtani.
Caminero’s MVP case has picked up steam after his two walk-off homers in mid-September, as if those wins somehow carry extra weight compared with the rest of the season. Rice, though, has caught him. Both players now have 41 home runs, but Rice has the edge in on-base percentage, .362 to .360, and slugging percentage, .537 to .523.
The DH label does work against Rice some, though not completely. He has played 55 games at first base and has mostly given way in the field to make room for trade deadline pickup Luis Garcia Jr. Caminero’s defense at third base hasn’t exactly been a selling point either; he is last among qualifiers at the position with -11 outs above average.
Still, the biggest part of Rice’s case is the same one that started this whole conversation: Judge’s absence. The Astros are on the verge of either missing the playoffs for the second straight year or winning what the piece calls the most pathetic division in MLB history, after dipping below .500 late in the season. The Rays have had Yandy Diaz and Jonathan Aranda healthy for most of the year.
The Yankees haven’t had that kind of luxury. Judge has been out for most of the season, Cody Bellinger has missed a long stretch, and Giancarlo Stanton’s presence has been barely felt. Yet New York is still headed back to the playoffs, and Rice has been one of the main reasons the lineup has kept moving.
If MVP is supposed to reward the player who meant the most to his team, Rice belongs in the conversation a lot more loudly than he has. He may not win it, but he has done enough to deserve far more respect than a fifth-place slot.
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