DUNEDIN, Fla. — Just about any time the ball has touched Ben Rice’s bat this spring, it has come scorching off it.
Grapefruit League stats can often be misleading, but exit velocities may be a better sign of things to come and Rice has been excelling in both.
The leading candidate to get the bulk of Yankees DH at-bats to start the season clubbed his fourth home run of the spring on Monday while going 2-for-4 in a 6-5 loss to the Blue Jays at TD Ballpark.
Rice’s two hits came off the bat at 111.1 mph (an RBI single) and 105.8 mph (a 415-foot blast).
Through Monday, Rice’s average exit velocity this spring was 97.4 mph, which was among the highest marks of any hitter this spring (for reference, Aaron Judge led the majors in the regular season last year with an average exit velocity of 96.2).
It has only been a small sample size of 43 at-bats, but Rice is making the most of them while all but wrapping up his spot on the roster to break camp.
“It’s impressive,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He can hit.
“It’s real juice everywhere.”
Rice came to camp having added 10 pounds since last June, much of it muscle in his upper body, which has given him some extra pop this spring.
“It definitely helps,” said Rice, who had an average exit velocity of 90 mph last season in 152 big league at-bats. “It’s just putting more force in the ball, more mass behind it. Put it in the air, good things are going to happen.”
While the Yankees believe Rice can be a legitimate major league catcher — “He’s real back there,” Boone said before Monday’s game — his path to the most at-bats early this season may come as a DH while Giancarlo Stanton is out.
The Yankees are expected to carry three catchers — all of them left-handed hitters — with J.C. Escarra (who has also had a strong spring offensively) serving as more of a backup behind Austin Wells and Rice taking on more DH duties.
Rice played first base last summer while making his major league debut as an injury replacement for Anthony Rizzo.
He started off red-hot, batting .294 with four home runs and a .972 OPS through his first 17 games before cooling off and being optioned back to Triple-A by September.
“There’s another level of power in there,” Boone said. “It got your attention last year, the way he could drive the ball, but it feels noticeably even different this year.”
