Ben Rice playing catcher still not in Yankees plans for now

Until Ben Rice actually dons catcher’s gear in a game this season, the questions will continue about whether the Yankees are going to use him there to optimize their lineup.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

But another week has passed, and despite the Yankees continuing to leave the door open for it to happen, there has still been no movement toward Rice getting behind the plate.“Not yet,” manager Aaron Boone said over the weekend.“We talk about it a lot.

That’s not in the plans right now, but we’ll see.”There are multiple reasons for that, perhaps the most significant one being that the Yankees do not want to mess with the good thing they have going in Rice, whose .998 OPS was second in the majors as of Monday and 19 home runs led the team.The lefty slugger has done so while starting 37 games at first base and 24 at DH.“Obviously he’s so important to our lineup,” Boone said.

“You start ramping him up in a demanding position …”Left unsaid is that the Yankees can ill afford to lose Rice at a time when they are already expected to be without Aaron Judge for a good chunk of the summer.Getting behind the plate — which would be a process that takes time to build up to, not just throwing him right into nine-inning games — would put Rice at higher risk of injury, or at least more wear and tear that could sap his offensive production.Rice dealt with some of that wear and tear during spring training, when he was bouncing between first base and catcher in workouts but never caught an exhibition because the Yankees did not want to overdo his workload.

He was still catching occasional bullpens and doing some defensive work behind the plate during the regular season until missing a few games with a bruised hand in early May.Since then, the Yankees have pumped the brakes on his catching work, though Boone said the hand is no longer an issu...