MLB.com's latest Hitter Power Rankings pushed Aaron Judge down to seventh and left Ben Rice off the list entirely, even after Rice received votes in the previous poll.
The timing matters because the rankings landed after both Yankees hitters cooled in May, but they did so from very different places. Judge had started the season as No. 1 in the previous rankings, while Rice was trying to stay in the conversation with a strong first two months and enough support from voters to make the omission stand out.
Judge's slide was not dramatic, but it was enough to cost him the top spot. Through Tuesday, he had hit just one home run over his previous 14 games and his OPS had dipped from 1.035 to.949. Even so, he remained tied for fourth in the majors with 17 home runs, ranked eighth in slugging percentage at.554 and ninth in OPS at.934. In May, he hit.253 with five home runs, numbers that would help most hitters but still look modest beside his own standard.
Rice's absence was the sharper surprise. He hit.247 with six home runs in May, but his season line still included a 1.006 OPS, which ranked second in the majors, and 16 home runs, which ranked sixth-best overall. That was enough to draw votes in the most recent poll, which made leaving him off the latest list a notable call by the nine voters involved: David Adler, Jason Catania, Jared Greenspan, Thomas Harrigan, Brent Maguire, Brian Murphy, Manny Randhawa, Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru and Andrew Simon.
Jason Foster, who wrote the ranking analysis, said Judge had cooled down a bit by his standards but added that he still sat among the league leaders in homers and OPS, so the slide likely amounted to only a small blip. He also noted that Judge had five hits over his past three games entering Wednesday, which could put him back in the top half of the list next time.
That leaves the bigger question around Rice, whose production still looks strong enough to belong in the conversation even after a quieter month. If the next set of rankings follows the numbers more closely than the recent slump, his name should not be far from the board.
