Stuck in a season-long slump, Austin Wells found himself sitting for the second time in three games on Monday as the Yankees won their series-opener over the Twins, 6-2.
While lauded for his receiving skills, the Bombers’ starting catcher has been tough to watch in the batter’s box this season, as Wells is hitting just .208/.267/.412 with 15 home runs, 56 RBI and an 84 WRC+. One of the Yankees’ more disappointing hitters, he has been even worse since homering in three straight games from July 5-8, slashing .156/.200/.234 over 19 contests.
“He’s been struggling a little bit, obviously, offensively,” Aaron Boone said. “I do feel like he is such a capable and good hitter. We gotta get him there to where he is a key figure for us because he really lengthens our lineup when he’s right.”
With Wells on the bench Monday, Boone asked Ben Rice to catch again. The hard-hitting sophomore ended up going 2-for-4 with a solo home run.
Rice is now hitting .235/.326/.463 with 17 homers, 38 RBI and a 120 wRC+. While he began the season mostly DH’ing and playing first, the natural catcher has been consistently getting starts behind the plate ever since Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge began regularly occupying the DH spot.
Monday marked Rice’s sixth catching start since July 26. He had just five such starts before that.
“I feel like he’s getting more and more comfortable back there,” an impressed Boone said after Monday’s game. “I’m seeing more and more of a presence and confidence and just the game sort of slowing down for him a little bit back there.”
With that in mind, Rice’s bat a needed force in the lineup, and Wells scuffling, Boone was asked if he could see Rice potentially getting the bulk of the catching reps moving forward.
“I don’t know,” Boone replied. “We’ll see.”
Boone was clearly uninterested in discussing the subject on the spot, but it’s a fair question when contrasting Wells and Rice’s offensive performances this season.
Fortunately for Wells, he believes he knows exactly why he’s been so off at the plate.
“I haven’t hit the breaking ball very well, the slider in particular,” the 26-year-old told the Daily News.
Wells said that this has only been a recent problem, but he is hitting .137 and slugging .242 against breaking balls this season, according to Baseball Savant.
With sliders specifically, those numbers fall to .085 and .213, respectively. Sweepers, a type of slider, have been even tougher for Wells, as he’s hitting .045 and slugging .182 against them.
For comparison, Wells has a .269 average and a .491 slugging percentage against fastballs, as well as a .158 average and a .351 slugging percentage against offspeed pitches.
With such drastic splits, Wells said that opponents have been throwing him more and more breaking balls. On top of that, he said he’s been pressing “a little bit,” compounding his offensive issues.
“I think they are definitely aware of it,” Wells said. “I feel like the first pitches of my last 40 at-bats have all been breaking balls for the most part.”
Asked what he can do to fix this problem, Wells said he needs to get his body in a better position to hit sliders.
“It’s more of a feel thing, because I hit sliders every day before games,” he said. “So it’s not the ability to hit it. It’s just the ability to adjust to it, in my eyes.”
Wells also acknowledged that his on-base percentage is terribly low. In fact, his .267 mark was the fifth-worst OBP among all players with at least 300 at-bats entering Monday.
Wells, who posted a .322 OPB as a rookie last year and a .370 OBP over his minor league career, noted that he could chase less. He’s right about that, as his chase rate has jumped from 25.5% in 2024 to 30.4% in 2025.
“But I also think that I’m making more contact than I’ve ever made before,” Wells continued. “So I think some of the balls that maybe aren’t great balls to drive that I’m swinging at are getting put in play rather than missed or fouled off. So the ability to go deeper into at-bats and maybe work a walk or something like that, I think that’s also where it comes from.”
Wells is barely making more overall contact than he did last year (75.4% in 2024 vs. 75.5% in 2025), and his weak contact and barrel percentages have actually improved. However, Wells is getting under balls more often this season, doing so at a 35.3% clip.
Another theory is that Wells’ catching workload is negatively impacting his offense, as he is in his first full season as a big league starter. However, neither Boone nor Wells subscribe to that.
Boone said that every catcher has to deal with the grind of the long season. He also said that he’s tried to avoid having Wells play three days in a row, a desire made possible with fellow catchers Rice and J.C. Escarra both on the active roster for most of the season.
“I don’t think it’s a workload thing,” Boone said. “I think it’s a workload that he should be able to handle.”
Wells, who experienced some fatigue at the end of last season, agreed wholeheartedly.
“I actually feel great,” he insisted. “I think that they’ve done a good job of managing that too. But my body feels really good. I can tell the difference right now vs. the end of last year, where I was at, and I feel normal for the most part.”
Normal, however, has not translated to offensive success for Wells. That’s going to have to change soon, or Boone will have to think harder about giving Rice more starts behind the dish.
