{"id":421707,"date":"2026-10-08T00:02:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T00:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/421707\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T00:02:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T00:02:41","slug":"why-yankees-moved-grisham-to-leadoff-spot-for-alds-game-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/421707\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Yankees moved Grisham to leadoff spot for ALDS Game 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Rice<\/a> accounted for all of the Yankees<\/a>\u2019 run production in Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS, clubbing a pair of homers at Tropicana Field.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t enough for the Yankees to avoid losing both games to the Tampa Bay Rays, especially because the bases were empty for both of Rice\u2019s blasts.<\/p>\n

So as manager Aaron Boone attempted to awaken a dormant offense in Wednesday night\u2019s win-or-go-home Game 3 in the Bronx, he assembled a new-look lineup that moved Trent Grisham<\/a> to the leadoff spot and dropped Rice from No. 1 to No. 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust the potential of the on-base there, and trying to get some traffic created for Benny and [Luis] Garcia [Jr.] and [Cody Bellinger] there,\u201d Boone explained pregame. \u201cConsidered it a lot of different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lefty-swinging Grisham was the Yankees\u2019 primary leadoff hitter for most of the season, but he hadn\u2019t batted in that lineup spot since returning at the start of the playoffs from a nearly month-long stint on the injured list due to a right hamstring strain.<\/p>\n

Throughout Grisham\u2019s absence, the lefty-hitting Rice served as the Yankees\u2019 leadoff batter against right-handed pitching \u2014 a role he remained in during the Yankees\u2019 first three matchups against righties in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

But that changed Wednesday against Rays right-hander Nick Martinez, a reverse-splits pitcher who is tougher on left-handed hitters than righties.<\/p>\n

It was something of a bold decision, considering Grisham entered Wednesday just 2-for-10 in the playoffs; batted seventh in each of his first three postseason starts; and struggled from the leadoff spot this year.<\/p>\n

During the regular season, Grisham batted .199 with 13 home runs and a .680 OPS as the Yankees\u2019 No. 1 hitter and just .104 with one homer and a .420 OPS in the first inning of those games.<\/p>\n

When hitting anywhere other than first in the order, Grisham batted .243 with seven home runs.<\/p>\n

Still, the Yankees appreciate Grisham\u2019s patience and control of the strike zone. His 12.6% walk rate ranked in MLB\u2019s 88th percentile, according to MLB\u2019s Statcast data<\/a>, while his excellent 19.2% chase rate \u2014 or the percentage of pitches out of the strike zone he swung at \u2014 ranked in the 99th percentile.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Trent\u2019s at his best, obviously, he\u2019s got that ability to get on,\u201d Boone said.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a difficult season for Grisham, an impending free agent who hit .211 with 18 homers and a .703 OPS and endured two separate IL stints due to right hamstring injuries.<\/p>\n

But in a must-win game, the Yankees turned to the veteran to be a table-setter for Rice, who followed up his breakout 41-homer regular season with four home runs and eight RBI in the Yankees\u2019 first four playoff games.<\/p>\n

That was one of several Game 3 lineup changes made by Boone, who also started Anthony Volpe over Jazz Chisholm Jr. at second base; Jos\u00e9 Caballero over Ryan McMahon at third base; and moved hot-hitting catcher Austin Wells to the No. 6 hole.<\/p>\n

Wells had batted no higher than eighth in any of the first four playoff games.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully,\u201d Boone said of the transformed lineup, \u201cit will be a little spark for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Rice accounted for all of the Yankees\u2019 run production in Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[164810,85685,108291,3817,23181,202,204,203,199,201,200,85681,77437],"class_list":["post-421707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-alds","tag-ben-rice","tag-game-3","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-trent-grisham","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}