NEW YORK — There is a name being attached to Ben Rice this spring that Yankees fans have not heard in a while. It is the name of one of the best left-handed power hitters in baseball. It is flattering, exciting, and backed by some genuinely striking numbers. But the same analyst who offered that comparison made sure to follow it up with two names that every Bronx fan knows all too well. And those names land like a bucket of cold water.
Rice turns heads in his second full season
Ben Rice enters 2026 as one of the more intriguing players in the American League. The 27-year-old first baseman from Cohasset, Massachusetts, spent his first full big-league season doing things that almost no one expected.
Rice slashed .255/.337/.499 in 2025 across 143 games and 581 plate appearances, clubbing 26 home runs and driving in 65 runs. His 133 wRC+ placed him among the better hitters in the Yankees lineup. He posted a 56.1 hard-hit percentage, tied for seventh in all of baseball, per Baseball Savant. His average exit velocity of 93.3 mph ranked ninth in the majors.
Manager Aaron Boone has already penciled Rice in as the primary first baseman for 2026. Boone told reporters he expects Rice to play against left-handed starters more regularly this year, a meaningful upgrade from the platoon-heavy approach that defined the early part of his career. Rice welcomed the challenge.
“I’m excited to get an opportunity that will maybe help me get some more action against lefties. Facing lefties is something that I’ve made a lot of improvements on throughout the course of my career. I’m excited to keep working at it.”
ZiPS projects Rice to slash .241/.330/.462 with 24 home runs and 73 RBI in 2026. But the underlying metrics suggest the ceiling could be considerably higher.
Joel Sherman draws the Schwarber line
New York Post insider Joel Sherman recently offered the comparison that sent Yankees Twitter into a tailspin. He put Rice in the company of Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber.
Schwarber led the National League with 56 home runs in 2025, posted a .928 OPS and 152 wRC+, and finished second in NL MVP voting behind Shohei Ohtani. He has topped 45 home runs in three of the last four seasons. He re-signed with the Phillies on a five-year, $150 million deal ahead of the 2026 campaign.
Sherman was clear that he was not predicting Rice would become a 50-homer threat. The comparison is about trajectory, not destination. He told listeners:
“He is someplace on the Kyle Schwarber scale. Awesome, left-hand power, (he) can tell a ball from a strike. They’ll probably be high strikeout numbers, high walk numbers, and homers.”
Sherman also explained the positional parallel. Both Rice and Schwarber came up as catchers. Both showed elite bat skills but defensive limitations that eventually moved them out from behind the plate. Schwarber settled in left field. Rice has become primarily a first baseman, though he still fills in behind the plate when needed.
“Both are guys who came up as catchers. Schwarber was much more hailed. He was the fourth pick in a draft and came up right away. Both guys showed early on, especially Schwarber, that they don’t belong at catcher. But lefty hitters, terrific power, Schwarber more. A great feel for the strike zone at a young age. Incredible self-confidence. Hard work and smarts. They both had it.”
The numbers that make the comparison stick
The statistical overlap across their first 188 career games is what gives Sherman’s comp real weight. Rice owns a .234/.319/.462 line with 33 home runs, a 118 wRC+, and 2.8 fWAR over that span. Schwarber’s first 188 games produced a .221/.331/.465 line with 42 home runs, a 112 wRC+, and 2.7 fWAR.
The similarities go further than raw numbers. Schwarber struggled early, was demoted to Triple-A in 2017 following a brutal slump, and came back a better hitter. Rice followed a nearly identical path. His 2024 cup of coffee produced a .171 batting average and a 74 wRC+ in 50 games. He went back to the minors, put on muscle, worked on his approach, and returned to post a breakout 2025.
Sherman noted that former teammate Anthony Rizzo played with both players early in their careers. Former manager Joe Maddon, who managed Schwarber in Chicago, remains a fan of baseball and has specifically praised Rice’s profile. The outlines, per Sherman, are there.
Kevin Maas and Greg Bird cast long shadows
Here is where the story turns uncomfortable for Yankees fans.
Sherman pointed out that 188 games is a smaller sample than it sounds. And to illustrate the danger of projecting too far ahead, he offered two other players whose first 188 games looked equally promising inside Yankee Stadium.
The first is Kevin Maas. When Maas was called up at age 25 in 1990, he was a sensation. He hit eight home runs in his first 24 career games, one of the fastest starts in franchise history. Over his first 188 games, Maas slashed .230/.347/.434, hit 36 home runs, and posted a 117 OPS+. But between 1992 and 1995, he played in only 179 total games. He burned bright and burned fast, per a 2025 retrospective from SI.com. He was out of baseball before he turned 30.
The second name is Greg Bird. Yankees fans do not need a refresher on this one. Bird came up at the same time as Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. For a brief stretch, there were those who believed he was the most talented of the group. His 46-game showing in 2017 was statistically the best early sample of the four: .261/.343/.529 with 11 home runs. He was part of what felt like a modern Core Five alongside Judge, Sanchez, Gleyber Torres, and Luis Severino.
Injuries ended Bird’s career far too soon. He managed only 186 games in the big leagues total. He is now out of baseball. The heartbreak of watching a young Yankee first baseman collapse before he could realize his potential is not a distant memory for most fans in the Bronx.
What Rice’s 2026 season actually rides on
The gap between Rice and both Maas and Bird is not just one of talent. It is one of context. Maas had no path forward when his production dropped. Bird had no health. Rice, by contrast, enters 2026 having already made one meaningful adjustment during his career, turned his minor-league demotion into a launching pad, and emerged with elite contact metrics that suggest his production was not a fluke.
His xwOBA of .394 in 2025 outpaced his actual wOBA of .358, meaning the underlying quality of contact Rice made was even better than his results suggested. His barrel rate of 15.4% ranked among the best in the game. The question is not whether the tools are real. The question is whether the tools compound into something sustained and elite, or fade the way Bronx promise has faded before.
Sherman projected Rice as the five or six hole hitter on the Yankees in 2026, a lineup that also includes Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. That kind of lineup protection could help Rice see better pitches and push his numbers further. Or the lefty-heavy nature of his swing could get exposed in a new way as pitchers adjust.
The Schwarber comparison is the ceiling. Maas and Bird are the floor. Ben Rice is somewhere in between, and 2026 will tell Yankees fans which direction he is headed.
What do you think?
