A Broken Arm Lands Struggling Anthony Rizzo on the Injured List

Even before he fractured his right arm during Sunday’s 9-3 loss to the Red Sox, Anthony Rizzo had already endured a rough 12 1/2 months. His 2023 season was wrecked by the aftereffects of a May 28 collision with Fernando Tatis Jr., which manifested themselves as post-concussion symptoms that sapped his production before he was shut down in early August; he didn’t play again that season. He started slowly this year, and while his bat perked up in late April, he fell into a deep slump at the beginning of June and was benched during the Yankees’ recent series against the Dodgers. He showed a few positive signs upon returning to the lineup, but now he’s expected to miss the next eight weeks.

Rizzo’s injury occurred during the seventh inning of Sunday night’s game at Fenway Park. After Alex Verdugo and Giancarlo Stanton both singled off pitcher Brennan Bernardino to start the inning, Rizzo grounded to the right side of the infield. First baseman Dominic Smith ranged over to field the ball and started to throw to second base before realizing he had no shot at forcing Stanton out. He then threw to Bernardino — or rather, behind him. The pitcher dropped the ball as he got to the bag, where a sprinting Rizzo swerved to his right to avoid a full-on collision. He lost his balance and went down hard, rolling over on his right arm. He remained on the ground in obvious pain while being tended to by the Yankees’ athletic trainers, then left the field and was replaced by pinch-runner Oswaldo Cabrera.

Initial imaging with a fluoroscope at Fenway Park was negative, but further testing in New York on Monday revealed that Rizzo had fractured the radial neck of his right arm — that is, the part of the radius near the elbow. Such injuries are more common in children than adults, and often occur on a traumatic fall onto an outstretched hand, which, bingo. Such fractures are usually not displaced, and that would appear to be the case with Rizzo, who won’t need surgery. While initial reports placed his absence in a four-to-six week window, on Tuesday the Yankees said that Rizzo will need about eight weeks before returning to games, with the first baseman saying he was told it’ll be “probably four, five weeks” of no baseball activity.

Eight weeks would put the 34-year-old first baseman’s return in mid-August, a couple of weeks past the July 30 trade deadline. Rizzo’s flagging bat had already increased the likelihood the Yankees would seek to acquire an alternative from outside the organization, though the entire infield besides shortstop (where Anthony Volpe has played well) is a major area of concern, and now the addition of another first baseman may be a necessity.

More on that situation below, but first, a look at Rizzo. Here’s what I wrote about his situation last August:

[U]p until his collision with Tatis, which occurred during a pickoff play, he had hit .304/.376/.505, good for a 146 wRC+, second on the team behind Judge. He left that game with what the Yankees called a neck injury and passed the MLB-mandated concussion tests, but missed three games before returning. Since then, his season has gone down the tubes, as he’s hit .172/.271/.225 with one homer in 192 plate appearances, with his batting average, slugging percentage, and 43 wRC+ all ranking last in the majors among the 168 qualified hitters.

Rizzo rehabbed to the point where a return was possible, but didn’t play again as the Yankees faded from the playoff picture; he finished at .244/.328/.378 (100 wRC+) with 0.9 WAR. As for this season, he started out well enough in April, but his production plummeted in May, then went into into a free fall in June:

That’s a 5-for-48 showing with five walks, a double, and a homer in June, including a 1-for-34 skid from June 1–11. A closer look at Rizzo’s Statcast numbers show that he wasn’t hitting the ball much harder in April than in May, and so his early slash line included some smoke and mirrors:

Rizzo’s overall numbers, bad as they are, are quite aligned with his Statcast expected ones. His average exit velocity places in the 11th percentile among qualified hitters, his barrel rate in the 15th, and his hard-hit rate in the 17th; his bat speed is down in the eighth percentile. It’s tough to find positives in that performance, which now includes a career-low walk rate and a career-high chase rate (34.5%). He is below replacement level, with -0.4 WAR.

With Rizzo in that 1-for-34 skid (which included just one walk and three strikeouts), manager Aaron Boone sat him for the series finale against the Dodgers on June 12, and the next day as well. “You play this game long enough, you know, the game’ll bring you to your knees at times,” Boone said at the time, expressing his empathy for Rizzo.

In that media session, Boone hesitated to draw a connection between the end of Rizzo’s 2023 with his struggles in ’24, saying, “I’d rather focus on what we’ve seen this year.” He added, “I think sometimes when you’re making little adjustments and they don’t always take right away, you go out there and… maybe you revert back to something different. And you break down some of the work. It’s tough, especially when you’ve been a successful player, like Anthony has been throughout his career.”

After sitting for two days, Rizzo returned to the lineup. He collected four hits in a three-day span against the Royals and Red Sox from June 12–14 — as many as he had in the previous two weeks — including a homer on June 13, his first since May 10. He went hitless in his final two games before getting hurt.

Maybe Rizzo was in a garden-variety slump, and maybe the time off will help him reset. But given how slow both he and the Yankees were to connect his struggles last summer to the aforementioned collision, I’m a bit hesitant to grant anyone involved — the tough-as-nails first baseman who leads all active players in being hit by pitches (219), or the team whose management of injuries over the past half-decade has raised some eyebrows — the benefit of the doubt.

Regardless, the Yankees already had a hole at first base, production-wise, and now they they have a deeper one. DJ LeMahieu, who’s been playing regularly at third base and spotting at first since coming off the injured list in late May, will spend at least some of his time at first, likely against lefties. The 35-year-old LeMahieu missed the first two months of the season due to a nondisplaced fracture in his right foot, suffered when he fouled a pitch off of it in a March 16 exhibition. He has yet to get going offensively, hitting .176/.283/.176 (45 wRC+) in 61 PA. His Statcast numbers are a bit better (.338 xSLG), but then how could they not be? LeMahieu finished with a mediocre .243/.327/.390 (101 wRC+) line with 15 homers in 562 PA last year, though he did post a 129 wRC+ after the All-Star break compared to a 77 before, when he was still dealing with the effects of a right big toe injury. The Yankees could certainly use some of that second-half magic.

When LeMahieu plays first base, Cabrera will likely play third. The 25-year-old switch-hitting utilityman has struggled to replicate the spark he supplied the team in late 2022; this year, he’s hitting .237/.275/.350 (79 wRC+) with five homers in 189 PA. Utilityman Jon Berti, who was supposed to provide another alternative at third, is on the 60-day IL due to a high-grade left calf strain he suffered in late May, and isn’t eligible to return until late July.

The Yankees filled Rizzo’s roster spot by calling up Ben Rice, a 25-year-old lefty-swinging catcher/first baseman who could get a long look before the deadline. Drafted out of Dartmouth in the 12th round in 2021, Rice lost all of that season and most of the one before it to the pandemic, so prior to being drafted, he’d played nearly three times as many games in summer college leagues as in the Ivy League. After hitting a combined .324/.434/.615 (171 wRC+) across three levels last year, Rice hit .261/.382/.511 (151 wRC+) with 12 homers in 49 games at Double-A Somerset to start this season, then .333/.440/.619 (172 wRC+) with three homers in 11 games upon being promoted to Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre.

Despite those gaudy 2023 stats, Rice placed just 29th on the Yankees’ Top Prospects list in December, with a 35+ FV grade. Much of that had to do with skepticism regarding his defense behind the plate, which hasn’t improved. Using the one-knee stance, Rice is good at pitch blocking, but in 28 games at catcher this year, he’s allowed 54 stolen bases — nearly two per game — while throwing out just 10% of would-be base thieves, and the numbers were similarly bad last year. In updated notes that he provided me, Eric Longenhagen called Rice, “still a well below average overall defender with issues receiving and (especially) throwing. [He] often mishandles the exchange and doesn’t even attempt a throw down.”

Offensively, Rice has average raw power and potentially an average hit tool, which is enough to make a catcher an interesting prospect, but doesn’t go very far for a first baseman. In his prospect writeup, Longehagen praised Rice’s “big time lefty bat speed,” and added, “The ferocity in his swing and the strength and flexibility in his lower half are all exciting, and Rice might end up having a two or three year peak in the mold of a Jared Walsh or Justin Bour, or perhaps be deployed the way Blake Sabol was in 2023.”

However, while Rice “murders fastballs, often on time to pull them with power, [he is] allergic to spin, hitting .200 versus breakers this year.” He’s vulnerable to pitches in the lower-and-away corner of the strike zone, swinging over softer stuff in that area, and failing to track the baseball through contact.

As for the defense at first base, at 6-foot-1, 215 pounds, Rice has the size for the position, but he’s played just 55 games there professionally, including 22 this year. His footwork is still rough, and during Gerrit Cole’s most recent rehab start, Rice whiffed on a throw.

The Yankees expect some growing pains, as infield coach Travis Chapman told the New York Daily News’ Gary Phillips:

“He’s smart. He’s willing to learn. I’ll take that to start. The reality is he needs to get comfortable out there and get used to playing there part-time, every day, whenever [Aaron Boone] puts him in the lineup, and we’ll continue to work on it. Hopefully we’ll see progress throughout these first several weeks, and hopefully we see an awesome guy out there making the other guys around him better.”

Rizzo, a four-time Gold Glove winner at first base, pledged to help Rice continue to learn the position and to break down how opposing teams are pitching him. “Opportunities in the big leagues are not easy to come by, so hopefully he runs with it and does really well,” said Rizzo.

Rice made his major league debut against the Orioles on Tuesday night, going 1-for-4 with a third-inning single off starter Albert Suárez:

That nice moment was overshadowed by Aaron Judge getting hit on the left hand with a 94-mph Suárez fastball earlier in the inning. Judge came around to score, then returned to center field for the top of the fourth, but was replaced by pinch-hitter Trent Grisham in the bottom of the frame. He went to a local hospital for imaging, and said afterward that CT and X-ray imaging came back clean. He added that he could grip a bat and hoped to be in Wednesday night’s lineup against the Orioles.

Looking ahead, if the Yankees do dip into the trade market, first basemen who could be available include the Mets’ Pete Alonso (if they’re unable to maintain their current surge and can stomach the blowback of dealing him across town), the Marlins’ Josh Bell (who was traded at the 2022 and ’23 deadlines), and the Diamondbacks’ Christian Walker (if they don’t heat up), all of whom will hit free agency this fall. Tigers outfielder Mark Canha, also a pending free agent, can play first as well. With so many teams so close to playoff spots, however, sellers could be in short supply, and it likely won’t be until after the All-Star break — or perhaps even later — before it’s clear who’s willing to deal.

All of which is to say that the Yankees have to have to hope that one of their internal options helps to fill the void. The good news is that the team has the AL’s best record (51-24) despite getting very little offense from first base thus far. The bad news is that sooner or later they’re going to need some, and it’s anything but clear from where that’s going to come.