The Yankees have been doing the thing where the lineup gets carried by whichever bat happens to be hottest that night, and lately that bat keeps belonging to Ben Rice. The kid hasn't stopped slugging, and the BENNY GO BOOM chant has officially graduated from inside joke to standing weekly tradition in the Bronx broadcast booth.
Another Rice homer, another BENNY GO BOOM call.
Rice is doing it on a team that has needed every ounce of offense it can scrape together. The Yankees just lost Gio (a guy Hubbs went out of his way to send off with flowers as a clutch, next-man-up clubhouse glue type), churned through a bullpen shuffle that brought Yovanny up and pushed ERC out, and they've been winning games on miracle Volpe slides and late-inning Belli bombs. In that environment, a young left-handed thumper hitting like Rice is the difference between treading water and actually banking series wins.
The kind of late-game Belli bomb the Yankees have needed alongside Rice's production.
It's not just the homers either. Rice has been on those tear-streaks where every at-bat looks like a potential damage event, the kind of 1-for-1 nights that make you sit up before you've even checked the box score. Hubbs has been chronicling it pitch by pitch, and StoolBaseball has been right there to clip it the second the ball leaves the bat.
Rice picking up where he left off — 1 for his last 1.
StoolBaseball running the Rice highlight for the timeline.
The bigger picture: Rice was supposed to be a depth piece, a bat-first catcher/1B/DH type who'd give the Yankees some lefty pop off the bench. Instead he's playing himself into the middle of the order on a contending roster. As long as he keeps going boom, the Yankees keep humming, and Hubbs keeps yelling. None of that is changing anytime soon.