The Rogers Centre has proven to be a house of horrors for the Yankees over the last calendar year. In dropping the recent series opener in Toronto, the Yankees had lost nine of their last ten games north of the border including a pair of thumpings in the first two games of the 2025 ALDS. That the Yankees turned things around and won the final two games of the series—both with go-ahead home runs in the ninth inning—must give the team a ton of confidence after the Blue Jays had their number last year in the regular
season and playoffs. Few hitters had a bigger impact for the Yankees that series than Ben Rice, and his late go-ahead blast earns his third appearance on At-Bat of the Week.
We join Rice with one out in the top of the ninth, the score knotted at 3-3. Pinch-runner Ryan McMahon stands on second after Paul Goldschmidt reached on an infield single and advanced on a throwing error by reliever Braydon Fisher. Fisher entered the game as one of Toronto’s most effective relievers with a 2.70 ERA, the righty striking out over a batter per inning and giving up well under one home run per nine. If Rice can come through in the clutch, the Yankees will very likely win the series at the Rogers Centre, something that felt like an impossibility less than 12 months ago. Indeed, they hadn’t done so since 2023.
The scouting report on Fisher shows that he throws the slider just shy of half the time and his curveball just shy of 30-percent of the time, so Rice knows that he will be fed a steady diet of breaking balls. Indeed, out of the six pitches that Fisher has thrown to Spencer Jones and Goldschmidt, four were sliders, one was a curveball, and one was a waste four-seamer just for show. Therefore, Rice is likely hunting a pitch that leaves Fisher’s hand middle-up with the idea that it will land down and in.
This first-pitch slider begins aimed just off the plate inside and drops straight downward. It likely didn’t have quite the aiming point that Rice is looking for, which explains his ability to not chase this pitch despite it landing close enough to the zone for the catcher to unsuccessfully challenge the ball call. When the catcher is fooled that a pitch is a strike and the hitter is not, you know that hitter has an elite knowledge of the strike zone.
True to the scouting report, Fisher sticks with the slider after narrowly missing with the one before.
I’m actually a lot more impressed that Rice took this pitch than the previous one, despite the fact that this one ends up farther from the strike zone than ball one. That’s because this slider exits Fisher’s hand aimed right down the middle, meaning Rice had to pick up the spin early, diagnose slider, and realize that it would break out of the zone all in fractions of a second.
Rice is in the driver’s seat, 2-0, but that does not guarantee that Fisher is going to give in and groove a fastball to get back into the count.
This is just an unfair pitch to drop in back door for the called strike. It looks like a ball high and away out of Fisher’s hand and never looks like it is in the zone until the very last moment where it barely grazes the corner of the strike zone low and away. If the Yankees still had a challenge remaining in this spot I would not have been surprised to see Rice use it a lose it, this curve earning the strike one call by the very slimmest of margins.
The problem for the hitter once a pitcher lands a breaking ball for a called low strike is that you then have to protect the bottom of the zone, which opens up ample opportunity for the pitcher to get you to chase a breaker below the zone. That’s precisely the tactic that Fisher employs with this slider to follow up the curveball.
I’m not sure what Rice is supposed to do in this situation. Once again, this pitch looks like a strike right down Broadway when it leaves Fisher’s hand, and at 89 mph the hitter has way less time to react than against your typical low-80s slider. You can tell Rice is still sitting on a breaking ball from the way he sinks into his legs and aligns his swing plane to track below the zone, but he’s just not precise enough with his barrel to make contact.
With just two pitches, Fisher has turned this AB on its head, going from way behind to being in full possession of count leverage. Rice is in trouble, given that Fisher showed he can both land the breaker for a called strike and command it below the zone for a chase and whiff. Another well-located slider should spell the end of this AB.
Instead, Fisher falls into the classic trap of trying to throw the best slider of his life rather than one that’s just incrementally better than the one before. He spikes this pitch into the dirt by Rice’s feet and he has to hop out of the way to avoid getting hit.
Now that it is a full count, we are once again faced with a situation that in certain cases might dictate an in-zone fastball to avoid putting a second baserunner on, but in Fisher’s case that by no means a sure bet.
Fisher sticks with his plan of throwing sliders and Rice sticks with his plan of hunting one. It’s a really good pitch from Fisher — a slider dotted right on the corner down and in. The problem for him is that it is an even better swing from Rice. This is the exact pitch he has been hunting the whole AB — a slider down and in that he can drop the bat head on and pull in the air with power. His patience pays off, and after having seen four previous sliders, he now knows exactly how this pitch is going to move and anticipates its trajectory perfectly with his barrel. The result: a booming two-run home run to right to give the Yankees the lead in the ninth inning of consecutive games.
Here’s the full AB:
You don’t normally see this level of emotion from Rice, including the bat flip and shouts of encouragement towards his dugout. I wonder if he is feeling extra pressure to be the team’s primary run producer with Aaron Judge out injured. Whatever the case he continues to produce clutch hits for the team in what has been a breakout season from rising star to true superstar. He’s the third-best hitter in MLB by wRC+ (171), and his ABs have become appointment viewing — the first homegrown position player we can say that about since Judge.
