Free Ben Rice!

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!