The New York Yankees have been reeling for the last couple months, playing three games below .500 since the calendar flipped to June and going from a seven-game lead in the AL East to four games back of the Toronto Blue Jays. Now, a day after losing to Toronto in a comedy of errors (four of them in all, that is) and with just a week to go until the trade deadline, the Yankees are feeling the pressure to make a move that will salvage their season. The problem is that one of their most established players is hamstringing their chances of making an impactful trade.
Paul Goldschmidt has been struggling of late, and that has forced the Yankees to play Ben Rice at first base more and more. This is a problem, because according to the New York Post, multiple potential trade partners have expressed interest in the 26-year-old Rice as a full-time catcher.
The 37-year-old Goldschmidt won the NL MVP just three years ago, and looked like a great one-year contract for the Yankees at the beginning of the year. He's cooled off in a big way since, with an OPS of .464 in June, and he's yet to homer in July.
If the Yankees aren’t confident that Goldschmidt can turn things around, they may be forced to hold onto Rice, and potentially miss out on one of their expected trade targets of Eugenio Suárez or Sandy Alcántara.
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Why is Paul Goldschmidt struggling?
Goldschmidt has struggled to hit right-handed pitching, with a .623 OPS against righties and a 1.166 OPS against lefties. That makes it difficult to play him every day rather than having a platoon-type situation with the lefty Rice.
As mentioned previously, Goldschmidt has also been having a rough June and July after getting off to an incredible start to the season. This is a bit of speculation, but it’s not uncommon for 37-year-olds to perform worse as the season trudges on, and it’s possible that he’s dealing with fatigue or minor, nagging injuries that don’t warrant a trip to the IL.
If that is in fact the reason, then it’s tough to imagine him improving as the season continues. And if the Yankees can't count on Goldschmidt as an every-day option, it's hard to see them moving on from Rice, who's been very good (despite being very unlucky on batted balls) in year two of his MLB career. New York doesn't really have another option to put at first base; moving Cody Bellinger to the cold corner would neuter his value as a fielder and force an already banged-up Trent Grisham into center field on a full-time basis.
Neither of which are ideal. Then again, neither is letting this deadline pass by with major upgrades, and it seems like Rice might be the best way to do just that.