Free Ben Rice!

E.J. Fagan
Apr 15
2 min read

by EJ Fagan

***

NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission. This was published a few days ago so the stats don't include the last few games.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

***

Ben Rice is the hottest hitter on the planet. He’s at .362/.508/.745 on the season and not letting up.

His Statcast page remains a thing a beauty:

Just wow. Any team would be thrilled to have Rice as their best hitter right now. The case for playing Rice against lefties is twofold. First, Rice needs to face lefties to get better against them. Second, any player this hot can probably hit lefties and righties. No one platoons the MVP candidate.

So he’s playing every day, right? Nope. After sitting against a lefty on Monday, Rice is on the bench again against Reid Detmers.

What the heck is going on?

Paul Goldschmidt is obviously a strong hitter against lefties. He owns his own impressive OPS over 1.000 this season after nearing that mark in 2025. I get wanting to get him into games, especially as he’s likely a small defensive improvement over Rice.

The player who really needs to sit is Giancarlo Stanton. The big man has been fine this year, albeit with a weird low power .315/.383/.426 batting line. The Statcast numbers are good but not great:

That’s a fine profile for a DH, but Stanton isn’t exactly on one of his murder every baseball streaks right now. To make matters clearer, he has done all of his damage in 2026 against righty pitchers; he’s posted a .308 OPS against lefties. And at his age, he could probably benefit from more days off.

Why isn’t Boone playing Rice? My guess is that it’s a combination of believing in the platoon split and deferring to a veteran. But that’s some loser stuff.

Free Ben Rice!

6 Comments

iamthecoach

Apr 15

Rice has evrry metric saying he should be playing right now. No matter who is pitching. But yet you play McMahon and Wells? Are they trying to tank? Run off the fans? Lose YES subscribers? Waste Judge prime? WHAT? Just what? I can't figure this front office out. We know Boone sucks. But what about the people who are running him? It's really bad.

fuster

Apr 16

Replying to

Rice's platoon splits from 2025 do not indicate that he should be starting "no matter who".

and while his dozen 2026 PAs against lefties include 3 hits and 1 BB, they also include 5 Ks

and a slug of .273.

maybe the front office has some slight idea of how to manage the players, coach

Alan B.

Apr 15

The biggest problems is that both Stanton & Goldschmidt are making real money, and they don't want Rice to catch. If anyone believes that money is not a bigissue here, then I have a bridge to sell you.

Edited

fuster

Apr 15

ya simply CAN'T bench Stanton against lefties.

you must have a little patience

wait for Stanton to run down

Rice is doing quite fine as is

there will be time, there will be time

fuster

Apr 15

Replying to

I think that you're correct, Alan...... and that they are playing him full-time at the beginning of the season

and Stanton WILL run down w//o days of rest.

BUT, the team needs Stanton now.

and playing him now buys time to sand off some of Dominguez' rough edges.

when Stanton requires rest, and he will, they can place him on the IL

and bring Dominguez up

which will allow them to choose between using Jasson or Goldy or even give Rice a day or two at DH.

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