We need to start this article with an acknowledgement: Any list or stack ranking posted on social media is intended to generate engagement. Well, congratulations Major League Baseball, I have become engaged. On Monday night, MLB Network continued their coverage of the Top 10 Right Now, ranking various position groups. Someone—or perhaps something—called The Shredder presented this Top 10 First Basemen list:
According to MLB itself, The Shredder is not the leader of the Foot Clan, but is in fact “MLB Network research team’s collective system of research and analysis that uses traditional and advanced metrics and takes into account previous player performance to determine who makes the lists.” The more you know.
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Anyway, all of these players are fine, representative MLBers. There’s a name here that’s missing though, a name that was the sixth-best hitting first baseman in baseball last year even as his own team continued to give time to Paul Goldschmidt. That player is Ben Rice, and when I saw what The Shredder had presented, my first thought was “How many of these guys would I rather have Rice over?”
When thinking about this I’m not worried about contracts or salaries — the fact that Rice is making the MLB minimum immediately makes him one of the top three most “valuable” first basemen, alongside Nick Kurtz and Michael Busch. Let’s just talk about who I think would provide the most on-field production in 2026, whether that costs $780,000 or $25,000,000. To wit, give me Rice instead of Bryce Harper, Rafael Devers, Yandy Díaz, and Willson Contreras.
To start, Díaz isn’t really the Rays’ first baseman, with All-Star Jonathan Aranda expected to get the lion’s share of time at the cold corner while Yandy is deployed as the primary DH. Moreover, he, Harper, and Rice were all pretty well equal in 2025, in a tight band between 130-135 wRC+ and 25-27 home runs. Rice gets the edge because he’ll be 27 on Opening Day, and while that’s older than you’d expect for a guy about to start his second full season, it’s six and seven years younger than Harper and Díaz respectively. Father Time is the only undefeated champion, and we’ll return to him in a moment.
Devers is a little trickier simply because for the better part of the last decade, he’s been one of the finest pure hitters in baseball … except he went from Fenway Park to Oracle out in San Francisco. He actually did OK for himself in the power department — famously a challenge for left-handed hitters in that stadium — going yard every 19.75 PA as a Giant compared to every 22.27 PA while with the Red Sox. Overall though, he saw steps back in ISO and all three triple slash categories, and how much of that is a “new team” tax and how much is moving from the second-best ballpark for hitters to the 22nd best is part of the story of the 2026 season. I’m going to hedge to the latter though, not to mention San Fran has to be more than a little worried about first base defense. Edge to Rice in my book, long track record be damned.
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Ben Rice was better than Willson Contreras in 2025 at everything but two points of batting average. Contreras is moving into Fenway which should help him out especially as a right-handed hitter, but his Statcast page, were it a rash, would demand a soothing oatmeal ointment and not an immediate course of antibiotics like in Rice’s case.
So those are the four guys I would slot below Ben Rice. I’m willing to concede that Nick Kurtz is probably a better hitter — in fact, I’m not that far from being convinced Nick Kurtz is like, one of the five or so best hitters in baseball, period. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. seems to be a more complicated case, as his production was very similar to Rice’s in 2025, he plays a little more of a leadership role than the young Yankee, and occupies more space in the cultural weight of their respective franchises. I’d lean towards a wash but sure, we can slot Vlad over top. Pete Alonso’s raw power probably makes him a better bet in ‘26, but beyond that I’d be betting Rice all day. Still, we’re just thinking about this coming year.
We come to a couple of pushes — Michael Busch and Matt Olson. Busch was the best hitter of the three but not by much, and Rice’s underlying metrics are the most impressive of the trio but again, not by much. Olson gets the nod as the best defender, buttttttttt I generally don’t care about first base defense. We have a three-way tie for my 2026 expectations here.
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That leaves the head of the table, Freddie Freeman. For most of my adult life he’s been the gold standard of play at first base, and while 2025 was a step back from his own lofty track record, it was still a 139 wRC+ and a four-win season. Here’s where we move beyond educated guesses about performance and into straight speculation, where I’ll say that the future Hall of Famer is my breakdown pick of the year, the opposite of the ever-so-popular breakout pick. He will turn 37 midseason, has dropped out of the World Baseball Classic for personal reasons, and while he does have a 138 wRC+ over his past two seasons, it was 153 in the five before that stretch. I don’t think he outright collapses, but Father Time is winning on the judges’ cards.
So I’m confident that Rice is a better pick than four of the so-called Shredder’s top 10, maybe five depending on Freeman’s aging curve. The Yankees drafted a guy in the 12th round out of a school more proficient at churning out diplomats than sluggers, and you have a very good argument he’s one of the four or five best in the world at his position. Not a bad piece of business.
