Ben Rice Is a Top-Five Power Hitter in Baseball — And His Props Aren't Priced Like It

Ben Rice is not sneaking up on anyone anymore — or at least he shouldn't be. As CBS Sports detailed Monday, the Yankees first baseman launched his 10th home run of the season against Texas, making him one of just five players in baseball with double-digit homers before May 1, joining Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Munetaka Murakami, and James Wood. Rice and Judge are now the third set of Yankee teammates to each reach 10-plus homers in the club's first 30 games of a season — the previous pairs being Ruth-Gehrig in 1930 and Mantle-Berra in 1956. That's the company Rice is keeping, at least calendrically.

The backstory matters here. Rice's MLB debut in June 2024 was ugly: a .171/.264/.349 slash line, a 26.9% strikeout rate, and minus-0.3 WAR in 50 games. But Giancarlo Stanton's elbow injuries last spring handed Rice a full-time DH role to open 2025, and he ran with it — slashing .255/.337/.499 with 26 homers and an 18.9% strikeout rate across 138 games. That earned him the first-base job outright. What he's doing in 2026 is the logical extension of that breakout, not a fluke spike.

The underlying contact data is where this gets genuinely alarming for opposing pitchers. Rice is generating a 95.7 mph average exit velocity (fifth in MLB), a 64.5% hard-hit rate (second), and a 22.6% barrel rate (fifth). Those numbers put him in the same tier as Judge, Alvarez, Shohei Ohtani, and Kyle Schwarber. Last year his actual slugging (.499) lagged his expected slugging (.559) by one of the largest gaps among qualified hitters — he was getting robbed. This year the BABIP gods are paying him back. His 226 OPS+ ranks second among qualified hitters. None of this is noise; it's a hitter whose mechanics, strength, and swing plane have caught up to each other simultaneously.

For the prop market, the opportunity is in total bases and HR props. Rice is averaging roughly 2.1 total bases per game this season, but single-game total bases lines for non-superstars at this stage of April still tend to be set conservatively — often 1.5 — leaving significant value on the over in matchups where he faces a right-handed starter (he torches righties). The HR prop market is particularly soft: books are still pricing Rice closer to a 30-HR-pace hitter when his current xSLG and barrel rate project closer to 40-plus at season's end. Season-long HR futures at most books are still available well under 35.5. That number should be moving.

The team-total angle is also real. The Yankees are plus-49 in run differential through 29 games — the second-place AL team is plus-10. With Rice hitting second or third in a lineup that features Judge, the Yankees' team total is chronically underpriced at 4.5 or 5.0 against mid-tier rotations. Rice's combination of elite on-base percentage (.447) and power means New York's offense functions with a two-headed monster at the top of the order that most bookmakers are still underweighting relative to 2026 results. Lean into NYY team totals on the over, particularly in road games where the Yankee Stadium lefty-pull park factor is neutralized and Rice's numbers still hold — his 16 road homers versus 20 home homers since last season tell you this isn't a ballpark mirage.