WASHINGTON D.C. — Five weeks ago, Ben Rice was a net negative. The numbers said so plainly. Since the start of June he had hit .200 with a .391 slugging mark and a wRC+ of 91, below league average, and his contribution to the Yankees added up to less than zero.
A slump had swallowed the young slugger the Yankees needed most, at the worst possible time, with Aaron Judge sidelined and the Yankees lineup starved for power. The timing could hardly have been worse for a team already fading.
Then something turned, and it turned violently. Rice homered in five straight games. He piled up seven home runs in a 10-game span. He drove in nine runs across a four-game series in Tampa Bay and carried a lineup that had otherwise gone silent.
By the time the Yankees reached Washington, the slump was not just over. It had been buried under a stretch that put Rice’s name in a place only one other Yankee had reached.
A club with room for two
Rice’s 29th home run in the Yankees’ 5-3 win over the Nationals did something a box score cannot capture. It moved him onto a list of left-handed Yankees hitters who have reached 29 or more home runs before the All-Star break.
The list has exactly two names. Roger Maris hit 33 before the 1961 break, the summer he chased and caught Babe Ruth’s single-season record with 61. Now Rice stands beside him, the only other left-handed hitter in franchise history to get there this fast.
The pace behind the number is staggering. Rice reached 29 home runs through 93 Yankees games, a clip that projects to roughly 50 over a full season. He entered the Washington series batting .275 with 90 hits, 28 homers, 65 RBIs and 63 runs, and his .969 OPS ranked third in the majors.
He is tied with Houston’s Yordan Alvarez for second in home runs across all of baseball, one behind the lead. Among qualified first basemen since the start of last season, his 145 wRC+ leads everyone, and his .886 OPS ranks second at the position.
What a former manager sees
The turnaround has drawn notice from people who know the position and the pressure. Former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who guided the club for a decade, spoke about Rice before Friday’s game and pointed to the temperament underneath the power.
Girardi framed Rice’s demeanor as the reason a cold month never became a crisis.
“He plays it with a lot of joy,” Girardi said, adding that Rice is happy all the time.
He drew a straight line from that disposition to the recovery, noting how quickly the story flipped.
“He struggled in June. In July, he has been fantastic,” Girardi said.
Then Girardi offered the verdict the numbers already supported, that the honor waiting for Rice next week was earned.
“He deserves to be an All-Star,” Girardi said.
Rice himself has waved off the drama of the slump, describing a season too long to be defined by any single month.
“It’s such a long year,” Rice said, according to SNY’s Robert Sanchez.
A path to All-Star starting lineup
The individual reward may be larger than a roster spot. Rice is now expected to start at first base for the American League in the All-Star Game.
The opening came from misfortune elsewhere. Athletics rookie Nick Kurtz won the player vote to start at first base, then was expected to land on the injured list with a right thumb capsule strain. That left the position open, and Rice and Baltimore’s Pete Alonso surfaced as the leading candidates to fill it.
For Rice, a 12th-round pick out of Dartmouth in 2021 who once hit .171 as a Yankees rookie before reshaping his body and his swing, a starting nod on that stage would cap an unlikely climb. He made his first All-Star team this year. Starting it would be a separate milestone entirely.
The timing also serves the Yankees. With Judge out and no certainty he will be at full strength when he returns, the club has leaned on Rice to anchor an offense stripped of its two biggest bats. He and Giancarlo Stanton have both been asked to cover for absences, and Rice has answered.
Rice keeps Yankees floating
Rice’s power surge has not moved the Yankees up the standings, but it has kept them from sliding further. They remain four games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East, and Rice’s bat is a large part of why the deficit did not grow during a three-week team-wide slump.
His clutch production stands out even among his own numbers. Rice has hit 13 home runs this season that gave the Yankees a lead, the most in the majors. In a summer defined by what the lineup could not do, he kept providing the one thing it lacked.
The Yankees close their series in Washington before the break, then send Rice to Philadelphia for the All-Star festivities, including Monday’s Home Run Derby at Citizens Bank Park. He committed to the Derby earlier in the week and has homered repeatedly since, a rare bright thread through a difficult Yankees month.
The slump that defined his June is gone, erased by a July that rewrote his season. What remains is a 27-year-old on a 50-homer pace, one name on a list of two, and a starting job on baseball’s biggest midsummer stage waiting to be claimed.
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