Alexander Wilson
The last time the New York Yankees had a homegrown first baseman putting up numbers like this, Don Mattingly was still taking the field at Yankee Stadium. That was 1995. Three decades of waiting for this position to produce something special from within the organization, and now here comes a 12th-round pick out of Dartmouth hitting .338 with eight home runs and a 245 wRC+ in late April.
At the pace Rice is on right now, the comparisons to Lou Gehrig’s legendary 1927 season are not as ridiculous as they might sound. Gehrig hit .373 that year with a 205 wRC+ and a 12.4 fWAR in what remains one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. Rice is obviously not there yet, and a full season has a way of humbling early hot starts. But the fact that the name is coming up at all tells you something about the level of production he’s generating through the first few weeks of the year.
What Makes This Different
I’ve watched a lot of Yankees prospects cycle through first base over the years, and most of them never fully arrived. Rice’s profile is different because the underlying quality of his contact has been elite since before he got to the major leagues, and it has only gotten better. He ranks in the 97th percentile or better in barrel rate, average exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and walk rate. His expected batting average and expected slugging are both significantly higher than his career marks, meaning he’s not even getting full credit from the stat sheet for how well he’s actually hitting the baseball.
He’s hit home runs in four straight games. On Sunday against the Royals, he hit leadoff for the first time this season and responded with a solo homer and two walks. Aaron Judge followed him in the lineup, hit a two-run shot that scored Rice, and the Yankees cruised to a 7-0 win and a three-game sweep. Watching Rice and Judge back to back in that lineup is something I genuinely didn’t think I’d see from this organization when it came to a player they developed themselves.
What the Yankees Have Been Missing
The Yankees have spent the better part of the last 30 years either importing or spending their way to first base production. Mark Teixeira. Jason Giamibi. Anthony Rizzo. Elite players (Rizzo was old), all of them acquired externally. The idea of a homegrown talent becoming one of the most feared hitters in the lineup is something this franchise hasn’t seen since Mattingly’s peak years in the mid-1980s.
Rice was never supposed to be that player. He was a late-round pick from a program that doesn’t typically produce major league regulars. What he has done with the opportunity is something the organization should be genuinely proud of, both in terms of player development and in terms of recognizing what they had before everyone else did.
The Gehrig comparisons will cool off when the season finds its natural rhythm. Pacing slows, pitchers adjust, and 27 games is not 162 games. But Rice is doing something real, something consistent, and something that is producing genuine results at a level the Yankees haven’t seen from this position in a long, long time. Whether he sustains it or settles into a very good player rather than an all-time great one, the Yankees are significantly better for having him.
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