The Yankees surprised us with a veritable explosion of offense on Sunday, vanquishing the Blue Jays, 8-3, to secure the series, season series, and their highest run total in a game since scoring ten against the Mariners on August 12th. The story of that game can be distilled down to the bottom of the sixth inning, Ben Rice providing the pivotal blow to become the first Yankee to earn back-to-back mentions on At-Bat of the Week.
We join Rice with two outs in the bottom of the sixth. The Yankees loaded
the bases with no outs on three straight singles by George Lombard Jr., Spencer Jones, and Jazz Chisholm Jr., but a strikeout by Austin Wells and a pop out by José Caballero put them one out away from Houdini’ing themselves out of the inning. It was an all too familiar sinking feeling as Trent Grisham stepped into the batter’s box, until the plate discipline extraordinaire spat on a couple of close breaking balls to work the walk and ensure they plate at least one run and take the narrowest of leads. That left it up to Rice to truly make the most of this golden opportunity.
Before Rice got a chance to dig in, John Schneider called on lefty reliever Mason Fluharty from the bullpen to present a less favorable matchup for the Yankees’ slugger. He throws the cutter and sweeper combined over 90-percent of the time, and indeed it appears the strategy is to throw Rice only pitches that break away from him, starting with this first pitch sweeper.
Even though this pitch lands a fair distance out of the zone away, it still requires a good take from Rice. The pitch leaves Fluharty’s hand aimed down the middle before the 14 inches of glove-side lateral movement sweeps it off the plate as Fluharty targets an area for Rice to get himself out by chasing.
After watching Rice take that sweeper for ball one, Fluharty attempts to steal a strike low in the zone with the cutter. If Rice is expecting another sweeper to a similar location as the first one, he should give up on any pitch that exits Fluharty’s hand out of a similar tunnel, which would make him susceptible to a called strike on a low heater.
Fluharty just misses the bottom of the zone with this cutter and Rice displays an excellent eye to not chase this pitch. It was close enough that Alejandro Kirk initiated an ABS challenge, which confirmed the ball call on the field.
Rice has now seen what both of Fluharty’s pitches look like and has worked the count in his favor, 2-0. He has all the leverage in this situation to hunt a specific pitch in a specific location — I’d imagine something elevated and out over the plate that he can drive to the outfield.
Rice swings, but I have a hard time believing this is the exact pitch he as looking for. It’s a perfectly executed cutter from Fluharty dotted on the corner up and away, and there’s really nothing Rice can do except whiff as he attempts to pull this pitch — pretty hard to do in that location on a pitch moving away from you.
Fluharty looks to leverage the swing on that pitch into a chase on the next one. Kirk sets a target off the plate away as the pair hope they can get Rice to flail at a sweeper out of the zone.
Instead, Fluharty throws a cookie right down the middle. Rice is geared up for another fastball and swings way out in front, failing to punish the one good pitch he’s gotten to hit in this AB. There’s really not much more to it than that. Rice got his pitch and he flat out missed it — a worryingly frequent refrain for the whole Yankees lineup for long stretches this summer.
One perfect pitch and one missed mistake later, and now it’s Fluharty who has the count leverage in his favor. Having seen Rice whiff wildly over the top and early against that last sweeper, the obvious pitch is another sweeper only this time one that’s actually executed to its target low and away out of the zone.
This is a hell of a take by Rice. The pitch exits Fluharty’s hand looking like an elevated, centrally located strike before taking a sharp right-hand turn into the righty batter’s box.
After trying to stay away the whole AB, Fluharty finally comes inside with a full count cutter.
This is about as well as you can execute a front door cutter, painted on the inside edge of the zone but also elevated in a spot that makes it incredibly difficult for a lefty to drive with power. I have no idea how Rice managed to pull his hands in so quickly against a pitch that was more that six mph faster than the one that immediately preceded it and muscle it into right field for the two-run single. Instead of having to settle for just the one run, this clutch hit ensured that all three runners who reached to make it bases loaded with no one out would score, sending the Yankees to the seventh with a far more comfortable lead, 5-2.
Here’s the full AB:
Rice’s approach in this AB was emblematic of encouraging signs from the wider team performance in this game. His was one of several full counts worked by Yankees hitters after falling behind in the count. They also finally managed to come through with runners on, their impressive 3-for-9 with RISP a marked improvement over recent games. For Rice specifically, you felt he really needed to come through in a clutch situation after failing to do so a handful of times in the second half, and that success in this situation could serve as a boost in morale to help jolt him from the deep slump (.150/.262/.310 with a 65 wRC+) he’d been mired in since the third week of July. If the Yankees are going to mount a challenge for the division and indeed make a deep postseason run, they need Rice coming through with hits like this and performing at the level he did in the first half.
