NEW YORK — Ben Rice did his job on Oct. 5 at Tropicana Field. He took Freddy Peralta deep in the fourth inning. He took left-hander Ian Seymour deep again in the eighth.
It still was not enough. The Tampa Bay Rays beat the New York Yankees 5-2 in Game 2 of the American League Division Series, and four Yankees errors helped decide it.
Two nights later, the season was gone. The Rays won 4-3 at Yankee Stadium to finish a three-game sweep. Rice’s RBI single in the third inning put the Yankees on the board, but they never led.
Rice walked away from October hitting .421 with four home runs and a 1.605 OPS in five postseason games. The Yankees walked away with a question his bat cannot settle.
That question is where Rice plays in 2027. The answer touches Aaron Judge’s workload, the designated hitter spot and the Yankees’ winter plans.
A breakout built on the bat
There is no debate about the offense. Rice hit .264 with a .363 on-base percentage and a .534 slugging percentage over 154 games. He finished with 41 home runs, 97 RBIs, 105 runs and 85 walks for an .897 OPS.
He led the Yankees in home runs, RBIs, runs, walks, on-base percentage and slugging among qualified hitters, according to Bleacher Report’s late-September tally.
The timing mattered. Judge played only 66 regular-season games after a fractured rib and a late calf strain, and he missed the ALDS. Rice became the center of the Yankees lineup.
The climb has been steep. Rice hit seven homers with a .613 OPS as a rookie in 2024. He followed with 26 homers and an .836 OPS in 2025.
Tino Martinez’s 44 homers in 1997 remain the most by a Yankees first baseman since Lou Gehrig, Fox Sports noted in June. Rice came within three. The catch is that he spent most of the season away from first base.
The glove problem nobody can ignore
That is the ugly part of the breakout. When Rice did play first base, the defensive metrics ranked him near the very bottom of MLB.
Rice logged 474 2/3 innings at first across 56 games. He made four errors for a .991 fielding percentage. The advanced numbers were harsher than the traditional ones.
Brendan Kuty of The Athletic flagged the issue this week in a review of the biggest offseason questions facing the Yankees. He started with the bat.
“Despite how good Rice has proved to be as a hitter (41 home runs, .897 OPS), he was bad defensively at first last season,” Kuty wrote.
Kuty then measured Rice against every first baseman with at least 300 innings at the position in 2026.
“Of the 43 players who played 300 innings at the position, Rice ranked second to last in DRS at minus-8. Only the Seattle Mariners’ Josh Naylor was worse at minus-9,” Kuty wrote.
The Yankees did not leave Rice alone. He split first base with Paul Goldschmidt, a four-time Gold Glove winner who turned 39 in September. A season beside him did not move the metrics.
What minus-8 looks like over a full season
The raw total understates the issue because Rice played only part-time at first. Roughly 98 of his 154 games came somewhere other than first base, mostly at designated hitter.
Stretch his rate over a typical everyday workload of about 1,200 innings, and minus-8 becomes roughly minus-20 Defensive Runs Saved. That projection is a straight rate calculation from his reported innings and DRS, not an official figure.
Using the common analytics rule of thumb that about 10 runs equal one win, that pace would cost the Yankees close to two wins over a full season. The Yankees finished 93-68, five games behind the 98-64 Rays in the AL East. Two wins is not a rounding error.
Why the DH lane is already crowded
Moving Rice to designated hitter full time is the easy answer on paper. It creates new problems in practice.
Rice is 27. Parking a player that young at DH every day removes flexibility the Yankees need elsewhere. Judge, 34, is coming off two separate injuries and is the obvious candidate for more DH days. Giancarlo Stanton remains under contract through 2027.
Luis García Jr. adds another bat that fits best away from the field. García began his career at second base with the Washington Nationals and graded among the weakest defenders in the sport there.
Manager Aaron Boone said last winter on “The Michael Kay Show” that he expected Rice to be the everyday first baseman. The season did not unfold that way. Goldschmidt often started against left-handed pitching, and Rice spent most nights at DH.
Where the Rice question stands now
The Rays are still playing. Their ALCS against Cleveland resumes Saturday after Game 4 was postponed. The Yankees are 10 days into an offseason that arrived earlier than planned.
Nothing about Rice’s status as a core piece has changed. He remains under team control and is expected to anchor the 2027 lineup.
What has changed is the urgency. Range, positioning and receiving throws at first base are now the priority items in his development.
If Rice improves, the Yankees can rotate Judge through the DH spot and build a cleaner everyday lineup. If he does not, they face a harder choice about how many runs they are willing to give back for 41 home runs.
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