Ben Rice Is The Best Catcher The Yankees Have

The New York Yankees have a pretty simple problem at catcher this season, and somehow they’re trying to make it complicated. The obvious answer is staring them in the face: Ben Rice should be catching games.

Without him back there, the Yankees are basically running a two-option menu that nobody ordered.

First there’s Austin Wells, who last season hit .219. That’s not exactly the kind of offensive thunder you dream about from a position that already struggles to produce runs. Then there’s J. C. Escarra, who is what he is: a backup catcher. Every team needs one. But the key word there is backup. Not “plan A.”

So naturally the logical move would be to give Rice some time behind the plate and see what happens.

Enter manager Aaron Boone — baseball’s most enthusiastic shrug.

When asked if Rice would catch at all this spring, Boone delivered the kind of decisive leadership Yankees fans have come to expect.

“I don’t know.”

That quote, reported by Brendan Kuty of The Athletic, pretty much sums up the current Yankees decision-making process. The team is apparently planning to use Rice as their everyday first baseman — which would be the first time in his life that he’s primarily focused on the position.

Which raises a tiny, inconvenient question.

Didn’t the Yankees just sign Paul Goldschmidt… a first baseman?

Seriously. Why bring in Goldschmidt if the plan is to convert Rice into a full-time first baseman on the fly? That’s like buying a new car and then deciding to drive the lawn mower to work instead.

Meanwhile, as Conor Liguori of Sports Illustrated pointed out, there’s a perfectly reasonable baseball reason to let Rice catch some games. Injuries happen. Catchers get banged up. If Wells or Escarra ends up missing time, Rice would suddenly be thrown behind the plate cold without recent reps.

Liguori also noted another practical benefit: getting Rice more at-bats against left-handed pitching. With Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger able to handle first base, the Yankees would gain lineup flexibility if Rice occasionally caught.

You know… basic roster management.

But that would require Boone to make an actual baseball decision. And unfortunately, Boone operates in a system where every thought has to be cleared by the spreadsheet department upstairs.

That’s the real problem.

The Yankees don’t run on instincts anymore. They run on charts, algorithms, and whatever glowing spreadsheet the front office prints out that morning. Boone isn’t managing a baseball team so much as he’s reading instructions off a corporate PowerPoint.

And the result is a manager who often looks completely lost — because he is.

The solution here isn’t complicated. Rice should catch sometimes. It protects the roster, gives the team flexibility, and prepares for the inevitable bumps that come during a 162-game season.

Liguori gets it.

Most fans get it.

But until someone in the organization remembers that baseball involves human judgment and not just Excel formulas, the Yankees will keep doing what they’ve been doing for years now: overthinking the obvious while their manager stands there saying, “I don’t know.”

And that, unfortunately, is the Aaron Boone era in a nutshell. An idiot with a lineup card waiting for the spreadsheet to tell him what to do next.