One of the beautiful things about sports is that sometimes, we develop connections to random athletes for reasons we can't predict.

Rice has the best hard-hit percentage in the majors, and his average exit velocity is within the top 2 percent.

The Tigers teed off on Carlos Carrasco, who remains in the rotation due to injuries to Gerrit Cole, Luis Gil and Clarke Schmidt.

Before the Yankees begin their weekend series with the San Francisco Giants, Chris Kirschner and Brendan Kuty will be answering your questions in respective mailbags.

Let's look at some early-season trends, including Aaron Judge's brilliance and the emergence of Ben Rice.

For this week's rankings, we look at one name that’s having an outsized impact on either present performance or our future expectations.