TORONTO — Aaron Boone tore up his lineup card before Sunday’s game and slotted a slumping Ben Rice into the leadoff spot. For nine innings, the gamble looked like another dead end.
Rice came to the plate four times and did nothing with it. The Yankees leadoff man started 0-for-4. Worse, he booted a routine grounder in the ninth inning that helped Toronto erase a Yankees lead and tie the game.
The reshuffled Yankees order around him sputtered too. New York scratched out two runs on a walk, a stolen base and a pair of sacrifice flies, the kind of manufactured offense that has defined its summer without Aaron Judge.
Then the 10th inning arrived, and the gamble paid off in a single swing.
Rice validates the move in extra innings
With one out in the top of the 10th and a 2-0 count against Braydon Fisher, Rice mashed a hanging slider 438 feet into the right-field seats. The two-run homer, his 33rd of the season but just his second of August, scored automatic runner Ali Sanchez and pushed the Yankees ahead 4-2 in what became a 4-3 win over the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
Rice kept his reaction simple.
“Definitely felt good,” Rice said.
The blast carried added weight. It was Rice’s first hit of the entire series, ending an 0-for-12 skid in Toronto, and it came moments after his glove had nearly cost the Yankees the game. Rice had been one of the club’s brightest spots in the first half, one of four Yankees named to the American League All-Star team.
New York had entered the ninth clinging to a 2-1 lead. Rice began the frame by dropping a soft grounder for an error. David Bednar then walked a batter, bounced a wild pitch and gave up a tying sacrifice fly to Ernie Clement, blowing the save.
The error forced extra innings. That, in turn, gave the Yankees the at-bat that decided the game. His worst play of the day created the stage for his most important one.
A lineup shakeup born of desperation
Boone did not move Rice to the top of the order on a hunch. He acted because the Yankees had scored just twice over their previous three games, all losses, and because Toronto was starting Cy Young contender Dylan Cease.
The changes ran through the lineup. Trent Grisham, the club’s usual leadoff man, batted cleanup for the first time all season. Jose Caballero started at second base over the slumping Jazz Chisholm Jr. Luis Garcia Jr. hit second.
Caballero rewarded the call. He manufactured the Yankees’ first run in the third, working a walk, stealing third and scoring on a Garcia sacrifice fly. In the seventh, his two-out single scored George Lombard Jr., whose double had just knocked Cease out of the game.
Boone credited the utilityman for setting the tone.
“A lot of really good things by him,” Boone said, “and a big difference in the game today.”
Still, the Yankees managed only six hits, three of them for extra bases, and needed a defensive collapse from Toronto’s bullpen and their own late heroics to win. The shakeup changed how New York created runs. It did not fix the deeper problem of a lineup that cannot hit.
Rice answers for the error and the slump
Rice made no excuse for the misplay that nearly sank the Yankees. His postgame answer was terse.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Rice said when asked what happened. “I don’t know. The play’s gotta be made.”
He explained that the game moved too fast for the error to linger. More defense followed immediately, and he was due up second in the 10th.
“You just gotta have as short of a memory as you possibly can,” Rice said.
Boone saw the response as the mark of a seasoned player. He knew how badly Rice felt in the moment.
“No one’s feeling worse at that point than Benny, and to come up there and essentially win the game for us in the 10th was massive. Credit to him,” Boone said. “That’s being a big leaguer.”
Left-hander Ryan Weathers, who gave the Yankees 7 1/3 innings of one-run ball, nearly saw another strong start wasted before Rice bailed him out.
“It’s very easy for him to be pissed off that he didn’t make the play or whatever,” Weathers said, “but he stayed invested in the game and put a good swing on the ball.”
One swing does not erase bigger Yankees question
The homer, Yankees first in extra inning this season, was a jolt, but it did not undo months of decline. Rice hit .158 over his 27 games since the All-Star break. Zoom out and the numbers stay grim: Rice entered Sunday batting .191 with a .691 OPS over his previous 49 games, and .123 with a .471 OPS across his last 22.
Boone had defended him throughout, pointing to hard contact that kept finding gloves. He saw signs of life in the series.
“He’s gone through some struggles here recently,” Boone said, “but I do feel like, the last couple days, he’s getting his swing off and on time for some pitches.”
The Yankees need that to hold. Their offense has been among the worst in baseball since Judge went down May 31 with a fractured rib, and with Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton also sidelined, the lineup has leaned on Rice at the very moment his production cratered.
The win nudged the Yankees to 69-55. With Tampa Bay losing to Baltimore, they pulled within 5 1/2 games of the Rays in the AL East, their first gain in the division since Aug. 2. It also arrived after the Yankees had dropped three straight while scoring a total of two runs.
Boone pointed to the fight in the room as the reason his club keeps surviving nights like this.
“This season has tested our character and our resilience, and I think we have a lot of that in that (clubhouse),” Boone said. “It’s games like (these) we continue to find ourselves in, and we’ve got to keep fighting and know that we’re an incomplete team but we have a chance to be who we want to be. Love the fight.”
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