Yankees Rising Infielder Receiving Trade Interest

Teams Calling for Ben Rice

According to Jon Heyman of the New York Post, teams want the southpaw slugger.

"Ben Rice has been about the most popular Yankee in trade talks," Heyman wrote in his column for the New York Post. "Teams regularly have been asking about him, but the Yankees are understandably extremely reluctant to deal him."

The league's interest in Rice didn't start this offseason. During the trade deadline, Joel Sherman also echoed similar sentiments in the Post.

"But one way to make a bigger trade and/or protect the farm system would be to use Rice in a deal rather than strictly prospects," Sherman wrote in July. "And Rice’s value would expand if teams believed he could catch at a time when there is shortage of quality at that position around MLB.

"Rice has played just five games at catcher this season and started two. But he was drafted as a catcher, caught 121 games in the minors, and any conversation with him on the subject will reveal that he does not lack confidence as a catcher. Yankees catching coordinator Tanner Swanson has vouched that he sees Rice as a major league catcher, but that is not where the Yankees have needed him."

Rice May Not Leave

Players with Rice's team control and offensive profile aren't usually on the move unless it's an impact deal involving a star player. The times it has happened in New York are few and far between.

In Yankee history, the one move that comes to mind was when the Texas Rangers were looking to dump Alex Rodriguez and his salary, so Brian Cashman sent them the dynamic infielder Alfonso Soriano. It was a stunner because the Boston Red Sox thought they had Rodriguez that winter.

Over in Flushing, a player similar to Rice in the early 2000s was Mike Jacobs. Jacobs, a young lefty slugger, had a ton of raw power, and while he didn't display it much for the Mets' big league club, they managed to turn his hot 30 games in 2005, after his debut, into Carlos Delgado the following season.

Though unlikely, if the Yankees do trade Rice the way the Yanks once did Soriano and Mets did Jacobs, the two best names in free agency at first base are Pete Alonso and Josh Naylor. Alonso has been a star at the center of the Mets lineup since his debut in 2019, and Naylor has always been one of the peskiest bats in Major League Baseball.

It isn't hard to see why teams would want him. Rice donned Juan Soto's number 22 after the superstar's departure, and while it's impossible to replicate a future Hall of Famer's production, because no Yankee outside Judge came close this year, his numbers under the hood in certain areas are Soto-esque.

Rice's .299 expected batting average is in the 96th percentile. His .581 expecting slugging is in the 97th percentile. Rice was also in the mid to high 90th percentiles in average exit velocity, barrel rate, and hard hit rates.

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