The New York Yankees have a guy hitting .998 OPS, leading the team in home runs, and fully capable of playing catcher. Their catchers are currently slugging a combined .526, which is the kind of number you see from a pitcher who got lost on the way to the dugout. And yet, somehow, Ben Rice is not catching. This is a professional baseball organization.
The Setup Is Almost Too Perfect
According to the New York Post, Rice entered Monday with the second-highest OPS in all of baseball and 19 home runs on the season. He came up through the Yankees system as a catcher. He still sits in on catcher meetings. He still loves the position, by his own account. The Yankees catchers, as a group, are producing at a level that would get a Little League parent loudly escorted from the stands.
And Aaron Boone's answer when asked if Rice might catch? "Not yet. We talk about it a lot. That's not in the plans right now, but we'll see." That's the kind of answer you give when your kid asks if you're getting a dog. Not when you're managing a first-place pennant race with a gaping black hole behind the plate.
Yes, There Are Real Reasons. They Are Still Funny.
Look, the Yankees aren't completely brain-dead here. The New York Post lays out the logic, and it's at least coherent: Rice is too valuable at the plate to risk the extra wear and tear that catching nine innings brings. Aaron Judge is already expected to miss a good chunk of the summer with an injury. You don't want to break your one healthy All-Star by strapping shin guards on him.
Rice himself dealt with a bruised hand in early May, which the Post says caused the team to pump the brakes on his backstop work entirely. Boone insists the hand is fine now. But the Yankees, who were already tip-toeing around his catching duties during spring training so as not to overload him, have not resumed any meaningful work behind the plate.
This is reasonable! Protecting your best hitter from unnecessary injury risk is a completely sensible front office philosophy. It is also, when your alternative is a catcher tandem with a .526 combined OPS, absolutely hilarious.
What .526 Actually Means
To be clear about what the Yankees are protecting Rice from competing with: a .526 OPS is genuinely bad. For context, an average major league hitter runs somewhere around .730 to .750. The MLB average for catchers as a position is usually around .690 to .710. The Yankees are running nearly 200 points below that. At the plate, their catchers are currently functioning as scheduled outs with chest protectors.
Boone admitted to the Post that deploying Rice behind the dish is "absolutely" tempting given those numbers. Tempting! He used the word tempting. As if fixing a gaping roster wound with a player already on your team who played the position professionally is some kind of wild indulgence, like ordering dessert on a Tuesday.
So What's the Actual Plan?
Per the New York Post, the Yankees seem more likely to hold out for a trade deadline catcher acquisition than make any drastic internal moves. That's a reasonable long-game strategy if you trust your front office to pull it off. And Giancarlo Stanton just suffered a calf setback, so Rice and Paul Goldschmidt will be getting more at-bats at DH and first, which tightens the roster calculus even further.
The timeline isn't nothing. The trade deadline is a few weeks out. The Yankees are managing a real pennant race without their franchise player. There are genuine competing priorities here, and "don't break Ben Rice" is a legitimate one.
But here's the thing: the catcher situation is actively costing them games right now. Every series. Every lineup card. The deadline fix is theoretical. The .526 OPS is very, very real.
Rice, for His Part, Is Being Extremely Cool About It
You have to appreciate how graciously Ben Rice is handling the situation where the team won't let him do the thing he loves and is good at. "I love catching," he told the Post. "Right now, it hasn't been in the equation as much. With that being said, I always appreciate the position so much. That's why I still enjoy sitting in on the meetings and talking with our catchers about game planning."
This man is attending catcher meetings as a civilian. He is a volunteer defensive coordinator for a position he is banned from playing. He is doing everything short of taping his shin guards to his locker as a hint. The patience of a saint, or possibly someone who has learned not to fight Aaron Boone on roster construction decisions he cannot control.
The Dingo Take
There is a version of this story where the Yankees are making the smart, conservative call: protect your best hitter, plug the catcher hole at the deadline, don't create new problems while managing existing ones. That version exists and it is defensible.
There is also a version where a baseball team spent two years developing a catcher, watched him become one of the best hitters in the sport, kept him away from the position he trained for, replaced him there with guys hitting .526 combined, and then kept saying "we talk about it a lot" as if that phrase has ever once solved a baseball problem. That version is also real. Both versions are simultaneously true, which is what makes the Yankees the Yankees.
At some point the line between "protecting a valuable asset" and "hoarding a solution to a problem you refuse to solve" gets very thin. The Yankees are standing on that line in cleats, staring at their catchers' slash lines, saying "not yet." Aaron Judge is injured. The catcher spot is costing them runs. Ben Rice is right there, in the meeting room, taking notes on other people's catching assignments like a man who has made peace with his situation. He seems fine. The rest of us are not.
