Ben Rice Is Looking Like Aaron Judge’s Best-Ever Running Mate

The first baseman who leads the majors in OPS is looking like the budding star the Yankees have long searched for to pair with Judge.

Ben Rice, left, and Aaron Judge have combined for 17 home runs this season, the most of any duo. | New York Yankees/Getty Images

Throughout their century of dominance, great Yankees teams have often been defined by their dynamic duos: Ruth and Gehrig. Mantle and Maris. Jeter and A-Rod. And, for one glorious season, Judge and Soto.

In pairing Aaron Judge and Juan Soto together in 2024, the Yankees teamed up arguably the two best hitters in the sport. The results arrived immediately: the pair combined for 99 home runs and lifted New York to its first World Series appearance in 15 years. When Soto signed with the rival Mets last year, it left Judge without a Robin to his Batman.

It turns out, the next running mate to help Judge power the Yankees’ lineup was already in the building.

Ben Rice enjoyed a strong 2025 season, his first as an everyday player. But he’s taken his game to new heights to begin ‘26, and looks to be the next budding star to give the Yankees a fearsome one-two punch.

Through Tuesday’s games, the 27-year-old first baseman led all qualified hitters with a 230 wRC+. His league-leading .461 on-base percentage is powered by a 20.2% walk rate. His .754 slugging percentage, also tops in baseball, is backed up by the league’s third-highest hard-hit rate (64.4%).

Through 23 team games, Rice is leading the team in fWAR, with 1.4 compared to Judge’s 1.0. Should he keep up that pace, it would mark the first time Judge did not lead the team in fWAR for a full season since 2019 (DJ LeMahieu, with 5.7 compared to Judge’s 4.2).

Trusting the process

Last year, Rice was something of a Statcast darling. He put up a .255/.337/.499 slash line with 26 homers and 65 RBIs, good for a 133 wRC+. But his underlying stats indicated there was more in the tank.

Among 251 qualified hitters, Rice had the eighth-biggest difference between his expected wOBA (.394) and his actual wOBA (.358). And while he was the Yankees’ second-most productive hitter over the course of the season (by wRC+), he still hadn’t earned manager Aaron Boone’s trust quite enough to start against left-handed pitching, as he made just 15 starts against southpaws all year.

Rice’s 1.215 OPS leads the majors. | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Through the first few weeks of 2026, though, Rice’s approach is yielding the results that last year’s data hinted at. He’s hitting better than .300 against all pitch types (fastballs, offspeed pitches and breaking balls) and is leaning even further into his identity as a pure masher, lifting the ball into the air to the pull side at a 26.7% rate, the highest of his career. He’s already hit three homers off of lefties this year compared to seven in all of 2025, and as a result, he’s getting platooned less and less.

Projecting a player’s “on pace for” stats this early is a fool’s errand; it’s clearly too soon in the calendar to extrapolate any numbers from player off to hot starts. But if we just compare Rice’s under-the-hood stats to Soto’s lone season in pinstripes, Rice holds up favorably with elite company.

2026 Rice vs. 2024 Soto

Stat	Rice (2026)	Soto (2024)
xwOBA	.461	.463
xBA	.299	.310
xSLG	.663	.655
Barrel %	22.2%	19.7%
Hard-Hit %	64.4%	57.0%
Chase %	20.8%	18.3%

In search of Judge’s running mate

Immediately after Judge burst onto the scene with his 52-homer rookie season in 2017, the Yankees tried to pair him with another intimidating slugger. The team added Giancarlo Stanton the following offseason, fresh off Stanton’s 59-homer, MVP-winning season with the Marlins, clearly in an effort to give the Bronx Bombers their modern day Bash Bros.

In the near decade that followed, though, the plan never fully materialized. Judge and Stanton could never sync up their healthy, productive seasons in the early goings. Once Judge ascended to his current level of dominance, Stanton’s injuries caught up to him. He last reached the 500-plate appearance mark in 2021, and while the power is still there, he’s amassed a total of 3.4 fWAR since then.

That’s led to far too many Yankees lineups where it’s felt like Judge was getting the Barry Bonds treatment. From 2021 to ‘25, Judge was intentionally walked 86 times, tying with José Ramírez (another star hitter with little lineup support) for the MLB lead. Over that span, Judge hit a ridiculous .306/.426/.649 with a league-best 42.8 fWAR. The Yankees hitter with the second-best fWAR total during that run? That would be Gleyber Torres (9.4), who left for Detroit before last season.

During that five-year span, Judge (four times) and Soto (in 2024) are the only Yankees hitters to post a 5.0-fWAR season or better. Rice looks to be on his way to joining them: he put up a 3.0 mark last year, and his improvements in the batter’s box combined with an expected increase in playing time should enable him to produce 3.2 more fWAR over the course of the next five months.

Judge’s nine home runs this year rank behind only Astros DH Yordan Alvarez. | Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

A future cornerstone

Rice’s production is even more of a godsend for the Yankees considering how little they got at first base in the years that preceded his arrival. From 2021 to ‘24, Yankees first basemen ranked 21st in wRC+ (99), 27th in batting average (.233) and 28th in isolated power (.146). The rotating group of LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Jake Bauers and Luke Voit could not claim the spot for long, and left New York weak in what’s typically a team’s most hitter-friendly position.

And unlike Soto, Rice looks to be here for the long haul. He won’t be eligible for free agency until after the 2030 campaign, giving the Yankees the chance to keep him in pinstripes until at least his age-31 season.

By then, Judge will be 38 and will have just one year left on his current contract. Will that be the time Rice takes over as the face of the franchise? It’s far too soon to make such claims, of course. But it’s clear that the Yankees have another star on their hands—and with him, perhaps another prolific duo to anchor their lineup for years to come.

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