{"id":491740,"date":"2026-02-26T14:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491740\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T14:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:12:09","slug":"yankees-ben-rice-falls-short-of-top-10-mlb-first-basemen-ranking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/491740\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees’ Ben Rice falls short of top 10 MLB first basemen ranking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yankees’ Ben Rice falls short of top 10 MLB first basemen ranking <\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First baseman Ben Rice may need one more productive season to prove his rank as a top 10 player in Major League Baseball at the corner position.<\/p>\n

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Rice will be starting at first base for the New York Yankees<\/a>, while 38-year-old veteran Paul Goldschmidt<\/a> piggybacks and plays mentor.<\/p>\n

The left-handed hitter had a breakout season in 2025, hitting 26 home runs with a .836 OPS and an expected batting average (.285) way above his actual mark (.250). Can Rice duplicate and or improve on his production from last season?<\/p>\n

Rice lands behind two division rivals<\/p>\n

Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter<\/a> ranked Rice the 13th-best first baseman ahead of the 2026 season. Ahead of him are Jonathan Aranda of the Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> and Wilson Contreras of the Boston Red Sox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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“Rice did the bulk of his damage last season against right-handed pitching, and that will likely be the case once again after veteran Paul Goldschmidt was re-signed to serve as his platoon partner,” wrote Reuter.<\/p>\n

“With occasional starts behind the plate mixed in with his primary first base role, there is a path to 600 plate appearances. His elite batted-ball metrics\u00a0scream 30-homer upside.”<\/p>\n

It appears Rice will have every opportunity for more at-bats<\/a> this season against left-handed pitching. He hit just .208 in 106 at-bats against lefties last year.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yankees’ Ben Rice falls short of top 10 MLB first basemen ranking originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[27449,374,225386,12942,13090,363,369,32033,99,974],"class_list":["post-491740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ben-rice","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-breakout-season","tag-jonathan-aranda","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-paul-goldschmidt","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-rays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}