Yankees Finally Produce Homegrown First Baseman

Nick Johnson was the last to do it in 2003 with a minimum of 300 plate appearances. He had a .894 OPS that season, but he did it in 96 games and 406 plate appearances. In 1990, Kevin Maas had a .902 OPS in exactly 300 plate appearances. Mattingly's last season with an OPS over .800 was in 1994, when he hit for a .808 OPS in 97 games and 436 plate appearances.

Greg Bird is a notable entry. He had a fun run in 2015, but his .871 OPS was in 178 plate appearances.

Johnson never hit 20 home runs with the Yankees. He achieved this feat for the Nationals in 2006, when he hit 23 home runs. Mattingly's last time hitting over 20 home runs was in 1989. Maas hit 23 in 1991. That was the follow-up season to his fantastic rookie campaign, and he was never quite as good again.

Whether Rice will stick is the big question here. A Yankee first baseman rarely pans out. Bird looked like he had a real shot of being something, but injuries caught up to him. The last time we saw the best of Bird was in the 2017 American League Championship Series. Then, with Johnson, he was statistically underrated, but he could never stay on the field, and he was traded for Javier Vazquez. The Vazquez trade is its own can of worms.

Maas set the foundation for Yankee first basemen who were but a flash. He burned bright, but burned fast. Between 1992 and 1995, he played in only 179 games.

It's hard to say if Rice will join that list of first basemen with brief careers. Whatever the case may be, he has had a solid 2025. The Toronto Blue Jays might tell anybody who will listen that Max Scherzer was snake-bit by pitch tipping, but that blast by Rice is something we've seen all year. It was not an outlier, and Rice has enough power to take anybody deep.

Those numbers under the hood show that. He is in the 90th percentile of expected batting average, expected slugging, heart rate, and barrel rate. Every time Rice makes contact, he smokes the ball. That is especially the case when you throw a 94.8 MPH fastball down the heart of the plate the way Scherzer did. Rice has too much power for that not to land in the seats.

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