It took one inning for Aaron Boone's baffling Game 1 strategy to look even worse

After the New York Yankees let yet another game against the Boston Red Sox slip away in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card series on Tuesday night, all anybody in the Bronx wanted to talk about was manager Aaron Boone's decision to pull starter Max Fried after 6.1 shutout innings. Fried retired the first batter of the seventh at just over 100 pitches, and as soon as he left, reliever Luke Weaver promptly allowed a walk and two consecutive hits to turn a 1-0 lead into a 2-1 deficit.

But really, we were focused on the wrong Boone decision. It doesn't matter how well you manage a pitching staff if you simply can't score, and the Yankees spent most of Tuesday night having no chance against first Garrett Crochet and then Aroldis Chapman. Boone made some controversial changes to his Game 1 lineup, sitting some of his regulars to start a more right-handed lineup in hopes of gaining a platoon advantage. Clearly, it didn't work.

One of those regulars was first baseman/catcher Ben Rice, who's been one of the team's best hitters all year and the hottest Yankee not named Aaron Judge in the month of September. Boone sat Rice on Tuesday night anyway, and New York missed his pop desperately. Just how much? Well, it didn't take very long in Game 2 for the second-year slugger to offer a reminder:

On the very first pitch he saw in the postseason, Rice took a Brayan Bello cutter out to right field for a two-run homer and an early Yankees lead. The ball left the bat at over 106 mph, yet another example of just how much damage he can do at the plate — and the fact that he's already become a hitter New York cannot afford to be without, no matter the matchup.

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Ben Rice immediately shows Aaron Boone why he should never be out of the lineup

To be clear, it was easy enough to see Boone's logic. Crochet isn't just tough on left-handed hitters; he's probably the single toughest pitcher in the league on left-handed hitters, holding them to a scarcely believable .166/.193/.262 slash line during the regular season. He's the sort of ace that makes you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do, and you can understand why the Yankees might want to sit lefties like Rice, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Ryan McMahon in favor of lefty-mashing righties like Paul Goldschmidt, Jose Caballero and Amed Rosario.

But in a game that was never going to feature many baserunners, and in which manufacturing even one run was always going to be difficult, it's one thing to sit someone like McMahon. It's another to sit a player, like Rice, who posted some of the best batted-ball metrics in the sport this season and who can flip a game with a single swing. Yes, he's worse against lefty pitching, hitting .208 compared to .269 against righties. But he still brings plenty of pop, slugging .481 with 14 extra-base hits (and seven homers) in 106 at-bats.

Would Rice have a hard time making contact against Crochet? Sure, but so would everybody. The difference is that Rice's contact is truly special, the sort that can carry you on a night where you don't expect to be getting a ton of offense. He showed that in a big way to start Game 2.