Your bag is empty.
If you were to pick a handful of American League MVP candidates this year, you’d probably not pick Ben Rice. He wouldn’t even be the first or second choice from his team, the New York Yankees. That’d be Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr., and there may be others.
Yet, so far, Rice has been carrying the offense on his shoulders. He’s tied for second in baseball in fWAR, which is usually a good indicator of the MVP race. It’s very early, but one MLB analyst has a hot take that Rice will remain a candidate all year.
Ben Rice for MVP?
So far, Ben Rice’s Yankees stats are pretty great. He’s hitting .379 with a .550 on-base percentage and .828 slugging percentage. He also has 0.9 fWAR (second-most in baseball) in just nine games, while most of his counterparts have played 11 or 12 games.
His 284 wRC+ is unfathomably high. It’s the best mark in baseball by 42 points. So far, he’s clearly been baseball’s best hitter, and he hasn’t been terrible on defense, either. It’s pretty surprising, because he plays with three-time (and back-to-back) AL MVP Aaron Judge. If anyone should be this hot on the Yankees, it’s Judge.
Rice was a very unlucky hitter in 2024, his rookie year. In 2025, he was also pretty unlucky, but the results began to better match the process. Now, he’s getting results at an impressive clip. He’ll slow down, but this is what the Yankees always thought he was capable of.
One insider’s take
Jorge Castillo’s hot take after the first couple of weeks of MLB games is that Ben Rice will finish in the top 10 of AL MVP voting. That may not sound like much, but this is a player who’s never even sniffed an All-Star Game. It would be a huge leap.
“I believe the 27-year-old Rice is going to be one of the best hitters in the sport this year and moving forward for the next several seasons. Rice produced an .836 OPS with 26 home runs in 138 games last season — his first full year in the majors — while being arguably the unluckiest hitter in the sport,” Castillo wrote.
Every underlying metric from 2025 was pretty good. He hits the ball extremely hard, which eventually leads to good results at the plate. He also didn’t swing at bad pitches, which also tends to lead to good results. Everything was good, but he was getting unlucky last year.
“It’s early and Rice, a catcher until he reached the majors in 2024, has room for improvement at first base, but a left-handed hitter smashing the ball to right field at Yankee Stadium with elite plate discipline is a recipe for a breakout, MVP-caliber season,” Castillo concluded.
AL MVP odds
As of now, Ben Rice isn’t a viable candidate to win the award. Even if Castillo is right and Rice puts together a full season with a little bit of batted-ball luck, and his numbers are great, he still faces an uphill battle. The AL is full of elite talent.
Yordan Alvarez is perennially one of the best hitters, and a good season with some health could lead to an MVP candidacy. Aaron Judge can’t be ruled out until we see some sort of proof that he’s human. Jose Ramirez is a finalist every year. Bobby Witt Jr. still rocks. Cal Raleigh is there, too.
That’s five good options just off the rip. There will be plenty of MVP challengers, and while Rice may end up as one, he probably isn’t now, even with a scorching-hot start at the plate. Here are the odds, with Judge still seen leading the way at certain major sportsbooks:
- Aaron Judge +180
- Bobby Witt Jr. +450
- Julio Rodríguez +1300
- Yordan Alvarez +1400
- Gunnar Henderson +1400
- Cal Raleigh +1500
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr. +1600
- Jose Ramirez +1600
You have to go a long way to get to Rice, who’s +10000. He’s not even the second or third Yankee on the list. Cody Bellinger is +8000, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. is +9000.
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