I’m not vain enough to think I’ve built a dedicated following of any kind whatsoever at Pinstripe Alley during my brief time here. If there was, though, they would just have had about enough of me railing on and on about the Yankees’ lack of a leadoff hitter. I had just cause—heading into the season, the team passed on retaining Gleyber Torres, who found success in the role, and failed to name a successor.
I was somewhat skeptical about 37-year-old Paul Goldschmidt’s ability to lead off. I was optimistic about rookie Ben Rice’s offensive potential this year. Needless to say, I was not expecting the Yankees’ leadoff hitters to lead the league in average (.352), wRC+ (222), OBP (.462), and OPS (1.128).
There have only been three Yankee leadoff hitters so far in 2025. Austin Wells led off the first game, during which he became the first catcher in MLB history to launch a leadoff homer on Opening Day, but hasn’t led off again since. That’s because Rice and Goldschmidt have combined to form a devastating platoon against righty and lefty starters, respectively.
The projections were somewhat bullish on Goldschmidt entering this season. Steamer projected Goldschmidt to post a 114 wRC+, which I thought was overly optimistic in December. In two weeks of games, he’s posted a 153 wRC+ with a .358/.397/.491 slash line, mostly building this impressive stat line by laying waste to lefties. He’s batting .550/.625/.800 against southpaws for a 1.425 OPS. What’s more interesting, though, is the type of contact he’s been displaying.
Instead of solid line drives and powerful shots, Goldschmidt is poking the ball to the opposite field more than ever before (insert the standard small sample size caveats here), going the other way 36.4 percent of the time. He’s not putting the ball on the ground to right field, but rather in the air—29.5 percent of his batted balls are hit in the air to the opposite field, again the highest rate in his career. Statcast further shows that Goldschmidt is hitting the highest percentage of “flare/burners” (basically bloops and hard-hit grounders) in his career at 36.4 percent. While you could say that this portends a harsh regression as those bloopers start turning into outs, some expected stats—like his .368 xBA—seem more hopeful that Goldschmidt’s performance is sustainable.
You can also look at the body of work itself and see that Goldschmidt has been the consummate professional hitter so far this year. Just for one example from Sunday, he dug a changeup from Giants ace Logan Webb out from under the strike zone and deposited it into right field for an RBI.
The day before, he shot a Jordan Hicks sinker to the opposite field and over the wall on a bounce to once again score Aaron Judge from third.
It’s important to note both of these pitchers are righties, Goldschmidt’s weaker platoon split. This is not to say that he’s his old MVP self against same-handed pitchers—the numbers still don’t paint a pretty picture there—but he’s at least giving himself a chance. No matter how you cut it, it’s clear Goldschmidt has some hits remaining in his bat.
For Rice’s part, there was a lot of hype surrounding the young lefty heading into this season. He had incredibly bad luck last year combined with impressive at-bats. He added 10 pounds of muscle since the end of the 2024 campaign. He was absolutely smoking the ball this spring. Yet there was absolutely no indication that he could do this for a sustained, albeit brief, period of time at the MLB level:
You don’t need Statcast to see Ben Rice is absolutely raking. He has added over 3 mph to his average bat speed, one of the biggest increases in the majors. Rice has also made a fairly significant change in his stance, opening up and allowing him, in his own words, to see the ball better. It’s also apparent this stance-opening has fueled Rice’s development into a pull-happy power hitter. The blast below went out at 113.2 mph, no easy feat.
Rice is now putting 27.6 percent of his batted balls into the air into right field, up from 18.3 percent last year. That makes Rice’s success incredibly fun to contrast with Goldschmidt’s—the veteran is poking balls the opposite way, while the youngster is smashing the seams off the ball to the pull side.
Whatever the change is, it has led to a .310/.431/.690 slash line, placing Rice in the upper echelon of MLB hitters in this young season. I was fully on-board the Ben Rice Train before it left the station this spring training, but he has performed far beyond expectations. With Judge performing at his typical elite level, the bottom of the lineup chipping in, and a viable solution to the leadoff question in place, the Yankees have an offense gelling nicely. If only the same were true of the rotation.
All cited statistics are as of the beginning of play on Sunday, unless otherwise noted.
