{"id":77100,"date":"2024-06-18T13:43:23","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T17:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=77100"},"modified":"2024-06-18T13:43:23","modified_gmt":"2024-06-18T17:43:23","slug":"yankees-promote-ben-rice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/18\/yankees-promote-ben-rice\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees To Promote Top Prospect to Replace Injured All-Star"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With Anthony Rizzo sidelined, the New York Yankees have promoted top prospect Ben Rice to replace the veteran first baseman. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rizzoan01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anthony Rizzo<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will miss four-to-six weeks after <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/17\/yankees-injuries-lefty-slugger-rizzo-dominguez\/\" target=\"_self\">fracturing his right arm<\/a> in an awkward collision on Sunday.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The 25-year-old was promoted from Double-A Somerset to Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre on June 5.\u00a0 Rice is<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> batting .333\/.440\/.619 with three homers and 10 RBI through 11 games as a Railrider. He is hitting .275 with 15 homers and 36 RBIs this season, spanning Double-A and Triple-A.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Yankees are calling up Ben Rice to replace Anthony Rizzo. Between AA and AAA he had a .275.393.532 slash line with 15 homers.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Joelsherman1\/status\/1803037559938843073?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 18, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drafted as a catcher, Rice has been getting more work at first base this year. His playing time between the two positions has been relatively even, drawing 22 starts at first base and 28 starts behind the plate. With <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/trevijo01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jose Trevino<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wellsau01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Austin Wells<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> sharing catching duties for the Yankees, Rice is expected to see the most playing time first. The Yankees are expected to split time between <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/cabreos01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Oswaldo Cabrera<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at third base along with Rice and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lemahdj01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DJ LeMahieu<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> at first while Rizzo is sidelined.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI feel good over there [at first base],\u201d Rice said. \u201cIt\u2019s a learning process, like any other position would be. It\u2019s just like anything; you\u2019ve just gotta keep going out there and keep seeing balls come off the bat, getting grounders, knowing where to be on the field in different situations. But I definitely like the improvements I\u2019ve made over there so far.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Yankees Promoting Top Infield Prospect Ben Rice<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite only playing 11 games at Triple-A, Rice&#8217;s impressive offensive performance justifies his early promotion to the majors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Through 70 games, Rizzo has hit .223 with eight home runs, 28 RBIs and a .630 OPS. The Yankees sat the three-time All-Star for two back-to-back games last week as he worked on his swing. LeMahieu, who debuted on May 28, has also struggled at the plate this season. The two-time batting champion has slashed just .188\/.304\/.188 with a .491 OPS and four RBI through 15 games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With LeMahieu struggling, Rice could see at least semi-regular reps at first base for the Yankees. However, the 35-year-old will still see time at first base against southpaws, given the rookie\u2019s significant split against same-handed pitching.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ben Rice will be with the Yankees as they open their three-game home series against the Orioles on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Jamie Germano\/Rochester Democrat and Chronicle \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Anthony Rizzo sidelined, the New York Yankees have promoted top prospect Ben Rice to replace the veteran first baseman. Anthony Rizzo will miss four-to-six weeks after fracturing his right arm in an awkward collision on Sunday. The 25-year-old was promoted from Double-A Somerset to Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre on June 5.\u00a0 Rice is batting .333\/.440\/.619 with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4975,"featured_media":77114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1071],"tags":[67,3602,258,696,4898,5927],"class_list":["post-77100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-mlb","tag-anthony-rizzo","tag-austin-wells","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-dj-lemahieu","tag-jose-trevino","tag-oswaldo-cabrera"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4975"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}