The Yankees finally managed to score more than one run with a 4-3 extra innings victory in the series finale over the Blue Jays to avoid the sweep. In scoring just two runs in regulation, they were in danger of making 11 games out of 16 in which they scored two or fewer runs. That wasn’t the only skid they hopefully managed to snap, Ben Rice supplying the game-winning two-run homer in the ninth amid a serious slide for a player who powered much of their offense in the first half.
We join Rice with one out in the top of the tenth, automatic runner Ali Sánchez standing on third following a leadoff sacrifice bunt by José Caballero. Rice entered this contest eight for his last 64 with just one home run. He has not had the best of games to this point, 0-for-4 with a strikeout and coming off a critical error in the bottom of the ninth that led to the game-tying run to score off David Bednar to send it to extras. The pressure is on Rice to atone for his mistake, which can’t make his job at the plate any easier.
Blue Jays reliever Braydon Fisher throws his slider more than half the time. When you include the curveball, roughly 80-percent of the pitches that Fisher throws are breaking balls, so you can bet that Rice is sitting on a bender here.
Indeed, Fisher starts this AB with a slider in the dirt for ball one. If not for such an extreme breaking ball usage rate, you could see how a hitter might be tempted to chase this pitch given it exits Fisher’s hand centrally located over the plate aimed at the bottom of the zone. However, Rice can pretty much eliminate anything aimed thigh-high or lower as four out of five of those pitches from Fisher will end up breaking below the strike zone.
With his next slider, Fisher attempts to back-foot one hoping this time he can elicit a chase.
Once again, a hitter who hadn’t read the scouting report might have been tempted to swing at this given it looks like it could be a fastball that will tail front door across the inside edge of the plate. Rice sticks with his plan of hunting the slider, which lets him know immediately that this pitch that starts inside will stay inside for ball two.
There’s no deviation in plan from Fisher as he throws his third slider in a row, almost as if playing a game of cat and mouse with the hitter who must be thinking that surely he won’t throw three in a row to open an AB.
The problem with throwing the same breaking ball multiple times in a row is each has to be marginally better than the last as the hitter gets a better and better idea of the way the pitch will break and where it will therefore land given its initial aiming point. Instead, Fisher throws his worst slider of the AB, at the bottom of the zone but over the heart of the plate, and Rice does not miss it. He’s hunting a pitch that’s out over the plate and starts belt high, knowing exactly where to drop his barrel to do maximum damage. The ball rockets off his bat at 108.5 mph and travels 438 feet for the game-winning two-run home run.
Here’s the full AB:
Obviously, the Yankees woes on offense are rooted in the injuries Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton. However, we cannot discount the effect that Rice’s extended slump has played on the team’s misfortunes. After genuinely placing among the league’s best hitters with a 168 wRC+ in the first half, Rice’s season nosedived to the tune of a 63 wRC+ since the All-Star break. The absences of the aforementioned trio placed a mountain of pressure on Rice’s shoulders to carry the offense as the lone slugging threat, and unfortunately the burden has proven too heavy to carry alone.
It must be said that he has been on the receiving end of some particularly rotten luck. His BABIP has fallen almost 100 points from the first half to the second and his wOBA has plummeted 150 points despite a deficit of just 40 points in expected wOBA in the second half vs. the first. However, we cannot blame the entirety of his slump on bad luck, with regression in certain key areas underlying the loss of form. His strikeout rate went from 23.3-percent in the first half to 31.1-percent in the second, his chase rate has jumped by almost six percentage points, and his in-zone contact rate plunged by nine percentage points, all of which to me feel like a classic case of a player who is pressing for results.
While one AB is hardly conclusive, there was still a lot to like from Rice’s approach. His knowledge of the scouting report on Fisher meant he wasn’t remotely tempted into chasing the first two sliders out of the zone. Then, when he got his pitch to hit, he didn’t miss it — something which has plagued the entire Yankees lineup during this extended stretch of punchless offense. He has talked about how one of the keys to his first half success was hunting a specific pitch in a specific location and letting everything else go by, and hopefully this AB is the start of a return to that approach for a player who is as important as anyone to the Yankees offense.
