WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Ben Rice’s .654 slugging percentage leads every qualified hitter in Major League Baseball. Not a category or a conference. All of baseball.
For a 27-year-old who walked into Yankees spring training on a non-roster invite less than two years ago, that figure sits next to names like Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt in the same lineup card. On Friday night at Sutter Health Park, Rice delivered the kind of performance that explains exactly how those numbers got built.
The Yankees designated hitter went 4-for-5 with a solo home run, two doubles, two RBI and two runs scored in the Yankees’ 8-2 win over the Athletics. He fell just a triple short of the cycle. His 17th homer of the season tied him with Judge for the team lead. Three multi-hit games in a row. Six RBI in three games. The numbers are not slowing down.
A night that had everything
Ben Rice did not wait to get involved in the Yankees lineup. In the opening inning, he reached base when Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz threw wide on a grounder. The ball sailed past a covering Luis Severino, and Rice was on. He eventually scored on an Aaron Judge RBI single to give the Yankees a 1-0 edge.
In the second inning, after Jose Caballero reached on a double, Rice stepped up and singled him home. The Yankees led 5-1. The game was already slipping away from the A’s.
Then came the seventh. With the outcome no longer in doubt, Rice got a pitch from reliever Scott Barlow and drove it to center field. It was his 17th home run of the season, ending a seven-game streak without a long ball, which had been the longest gap in his 2026 campaign. He finished 4-for-5.
The performance capped three straight multi-hit games, each with at least one extra-base hit. Over his last 16 games, Rice is batting .299 with a 1.047 OPS. Over the full 52-game sample this season, he is hitting .303 with 17 homers, 39 RBI, 42 runs scored, 13 doubles, one triple and two stolen bases.
Rice reaches HR no. 50 in Yankees franchise history’s fifth-fastest span
The homer off Barlow was not just a statistical update for the Yankees. It was a historical marker. It was Rice’s 50th career home run as a Yankee, and he reached it in 240 games.
Only four players in the franchise’s long history got there faster. Here is the full list:
| Player | Games to 50th career HR |
| Gary Sanchez | 161 |
| Aaron Judge | 174 |
| Joe DiMaggio | 200 |
| Gleyber Torres | 231 |
| Ben Rice | 240 |
| Kevin Maas | 261 |
Gary Sanchez still holds the franchise record at 161 games. Aaron Judge, the reigning AL MVP and the man batting just ahead of Rice in the same lineup, reached the mark in 174. Joe DiMaggio, one of the most iconic Yankees of all time, needed 200 games. Gleyber Torres did it in 231.
Rice, at 240, passed Kevin Maas, who completed the list in 261. Maas was a power prospect from the early 1990s who briefly threatened to become one of the game’s great sluggers before his career faded. Rice passed him on a Friday night in a minor league ballpark in Sacramento, on his way to building something that looks a lot more durable.
What 2026 Rice looks like against every qualified MLB hitter
The Yankees career milestone makes sense only in context. Here is where Rice stands through May 30 against all 163 qualified hitters in Major League Baseball:
| Stat | Ben Rice | MLB rank (163 qual.) |
| Home Runs | 17 | T-4th |
| RBI | 39 | T-7th |
| Batting Average | .303 | T-12th |
| On-Base Pct. | .393 | T-12th |
| Slugging Pct. | .654 | 1st |
| OPS | 1.047 | 2nd |
| wRC+ | 185 | 2nd |
| fWAR | 2.5 | T-5th |
The slugging number leads the sport outright. The 185 wRC+ sits second. That figure adjusts for ballpark and league context, measuring how much better a hitter is than the average MLB player at that moment. A 100 wRC+ means average. At 185, Rice is 85 percent better than the average qualified hitter in 2026.
His 2.5 fWAR in 52 games projects to roughly 7.8 wins over a full season. That is MVP-level production. The last Yankee to win an MVP was Judge in 2022. The numbers Rice is putting up draw a comparison most fans are still hesitant to make out loud.
Rice is becoming the Yankees’ rally finisher, not just a cleanup threat
The statistical breakout is one part of Rice’s story. The role he has started playing in the Yankees’ lineup is another.
For years, New York’s offensive rhythm ran through Judge and hoped everyone else filled in around him. Rice is changing that structure. He is not simply waiting for his pitch in an empty count. He is coming to the plate when runners are already on base, and he is making pitchers pay.
Two days before the Sacramento win, Rice went 2-for-4 with a triple, a walk and three RBI in the Yankees’ 7-0 rout of the Royals in Kansas City. He came up in the fourth inning with traffic on base and ripped an RBI triple off the left-field wall to start the scoring. Later in the same inning, he added a two-run single that turned a tight situation into a runaway.
That kind of clutch production matters more to a lineup than raw power in empty at-bats. The Yankees do not need Rice to hit a solo homer in a blowout. They need someone to keep innings alive when Judge has just forced a walk and the bases are full. Rice has become that hitter.
The Yankees have spent years relying on Judge as the only hitter capable of extending a rally with real force. Rice is giving the Yankees a second detonator in the middle of the order, a presence that stops opposing managers from building their game plan around one man.
Yankees offense reaches new level with Rice locked in
The broader context makes Rice’s Yankees numbers’s numbers even more striking. The Yankees entered this week having just gone through a 16-game stretch where they reached seven runs in a single game exactly once. Since that stretch ended, they have scored seven or more in three straight games.
Rice has been a central reason for that shift. On Friday, the Yankees put up eight runs on 11 hits and improved to 35-22. They have now won five straight games and outscored opponents 36-6 during the winning streak.
A player who clears that kind of ceiling while sitting fifth on the franchise’s all-time fastest-to-50 list is not a fluke. He is a foundation.
What do you think? How many home runs Rice will hit this season?
