Until Ben Rice actually dons catcher’s gear in a game this season, the questions will continue about whether the Yankees are going to use him there to optimize their lineup.
But another week has passed, and despite the Yankees continuing to leave the door open for it to happen, there has still been no movement toward Rice getting behind the plate.
“Not yet,” manager Aaron Boone said over the weekend. “We talk about it a lot. That’s not in the plans right now, but we’ll see.”
There are multiple reasons for that, perhaps the most significant one being that the Yankees do not want to mess with the good thing they have going in Rice, whose .998 OPS was second in the majors as of Monday and 19 home runs led the team.
The lefty slugger has done so while starting 37 games at first base and 24 at DH.
“Obviously he’s so important to our lineup,” Boone said. “You start ramping him up in a demanding position …”
Left unsaid is that the Yankees can ill afford to lose Rice at a time when they are already expected to be without Aaron Judge for a good chunk of the summer.
Getting behind the plate — which would be a process that takes time to build up to, not just throwing him right into nine-inning games — would put Rice at higher risk of injury, or at least more wear and tear that could sap his offensive production.
Rice dealt with some of that wear and tear during spring training, when he was bouncing between first base and catcher in workouts but never caught an exhibition because the Yankees did not want to overdo his workload.
He was still catching occasional bullpens and doing some defensive work behind the plate during the regular season until missing a few games with a bruised hand in early May.
Since then, the Yankees have pumped the brakes on his catching work, though Boone said the hand is no longer an issue.
“I love catching,” said Rice, who came up through the system as a catcher. “Right now, it hasn’t been in the equation as much. With that being said, I always appreciate the position so much. That’s why I still enjoy sitting in on the [catching] meetings and talking with our catchers about game planning.”
But now with Giancarlo Stanton suffering a setback with his calf, there will be more runway for both Rice and the resurgent Paul Goldschmidt to be in the lineup every day.
And while Boone said it is “absolutely” tempting to have Rice catch — Yankees catchers entered Monday with the second-lowest combined OPS (.526) in the majors — it still seems more likely they try to make do with what they have internally before potentially addressing the position at the trade deadline.
The first update on All-Star fan voting was released Monday, with Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger leading their positions (occupying two of the three starting American League outfield spots), with Rice trailing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first base.
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Jazz Chisholm Jr. was also fifth among AL second basemen.
Fan voting ends June 25, after which the top two vote-getters at each position (top six outfielders) will advance to the next phase of voting.
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