The A’s have reached settlement with designated hitter Brent Rooker on a five-year, $60MM contract extension, stories Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. The deal features a vesting choice for a sixth season that might push the worth to $90MM. ESPN’s Jeff Passan stories that the choice’s base worth is $22MM. Rooker is a consumer of The Bledsoe Company.
It’s one other important funding in what has been an enormous offseason by A’s requirements. As proven on MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, Rooker turns into the primary A’s participant to signal a five-year deal for the reason that membership prolonged beginning pitcher Trevor Cahill for $30.5MM in 2011. It’s the crew’s second funding for $60MM+ this winter. Final month, they added Luis Severino on a three-year, $67MM free agent deal that represented the most important contract in franchise historical past.
Rooker securing such a contract would have been unimaginable to ascertain two years in the past. He landed with the A’s on a waiver declare early within the 2022-23 offseason. Rooker was a 28-year-old DH/nook outfielder who had bounced between the Twins, Padres and Royals with out getting a lot of a have a look at any cease. As a former high 35 general draft choose who had hit properly within the minors, he was a wise waiver goal. The A’s actually didn’t envision it figuring out this properly, although.
The righty-swinging Rooker has turn out to be not solely one of the crucial profitable waiver claims in latest reminiscence however one in all baseball’s finest hitters. He popped 30 dwelling runs in 526 plate appearances to earn an All-Star choice in 2023. Whereas he was snubbed from the Midsummer Traditional final season, Rooker took one other main step ahead. He linked on 39 homers, 26 doubles and a pair of triples with a large .293/.365/.562 batting line throughout 614 plate appearances.
Rooker completed tied for fifth (alongside José Ramírez and Marcell Ozuna) in dwelling runs. Solely Aaron Decide, Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Santander and Juan Soto hit extra. Amongst hitters with at the very least 500 PAs, Rooker ranked within the high 20 in all three slash stats. He completed sixth in slugging — trailing Decide, Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Soto and Yordan Alvarez.
It’s now two seasons of borderline elite offensive manufacturing. Rooker has a .272/.348/.528 slash via greater than 1100 plate appearances in an A’s uniform. He’s within the high 15 in slugging share and ranks ninth in homers for the reason that begin of the ’23 marketing campaign. He’s a middle-of-the-order presence.
There’s a respectable quantity of swing-and-miss to his recreation. Rooker has fanned in additional than 30% of his plate appearances with the A’s. Final 12 months’s manufacturing was pushed partially by a .362 common on balls in play that’ll be tough to keep up. Rooker makes a ton of arduous contact, although, so he’s in all probability in line for a modest BABIP regression fairly than an enormous drop-off.
The ball-in-play normalization occurred on the finish of final season. Rooker carried an unsustainable .390 BABIP into the All-Star Break. That dropped to .333 within the second half. To his credit score, Rooker compensated by reducing his strikeout price to a way more manageable 24.1% clip throughout that stretch. It stays to be seen whether or not he’ll preserve that stage of contact, however it’s an encouraging growth that presumably affirmed the entrance workplace’s confidence in his hitting acumen.
Extra to return.