{"id":670615,"date":"2026-04-08T17:02:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/670615\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T17:02:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T17:02:21","slug":"ben-rice-predicted-to-shed-unlucky-past-with-top-10-breakout-for-yankees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/670615\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Rice predicted to shed unlucky past with top-10 breakout for Yankees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Yankees<\/a> have some of the best players in all of Major League Baseball, with Aaron Judge being the most noteworthy player on the roster.<\/p>\n

He’s easily a top-10 player in all of MLB, and is likely to finish inside the top-10 in MVP voting this season if he can stay healthy all year.<\/p>\n

But, he might not be the only player to finish inside the top-10 in MVP voting for the Yankees this season. ESPN’s Jorge Castillo<\/a> predicts that Ben Rice will shed his unlucky nature and finish inside the top-10 in MVP voting.<\/p>\n

Ben Rice predicted to finish top-10 in MVP voting<\/p>\n

“Ben Rice will finish in the top 10 in AL MVP voting,” Castillo writes. “I believe Rice is going to be one of the best hitters in the sport this year and moving forward for the next several seasons.”<\/p>\n

Rice finishing 2026 as one of the best players in baseball would not be too big a surprise. The underlying metrics point to Rice having some league-leading offensive upside.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old slugger had an .836 OPS and 26 home runs last season, and yet, as Castillo noted, last year Rice was “arguably the unluckiest hitter in the sport.”<\/p>\n

Rice had an xBA of .283 last season, while his actual batting average was a good bit lower at .255. And while it’s still early, he’s hitting 379 this season through nine games with 0.8 bWAR.<\/p>\n

More:\u00a0Three ways Pirates’ Paul Skenes could lose NL Cy Young Award<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a ton of season left, but so far, Rice has shown the high-upside that could lead to a top-10 MVP finish for Rice.<\/p>\n

He’s leading all of Major League Baseball this season so far with a ridiculous 1.378 OPS with a 298 OPS+ with 11 hits, 11 runs, four doubles, three home runs, and 11 RBIs.<\/p>\n

Rice put up 2.3 bWAR in 138 games last year. And this season, he’s already put up 0.8 bWAR in nine games. It’s unlikely he continues to stay this hot, but if he did, he’d be on pace for over 10.0 bWAR, which would be an obvious top-10 MVP finish.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot to like about Rice breaking out this season into a true MVP-caliber hitter, and this hot start, and this prediction from Castillo might not be a bold one if Rice’s production can continue the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Yankees have some of the best players in all of Major League Baseball, with Aaron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,4,1690,62,2548,2547,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-670615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkyankees","14":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116370168436097863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}