The A’s have reached settlement with designated hitter Brent Rooker on a five-year, $60MM contract extension, reviews Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. The deal features a vesting possibility for a sixth season that would push the worth to $90MM. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reviews that the choice’s base worth is $22MM and that Rooker will make $30MM over the primary three seasons. That represents what would have been The Bledsoe Company shopper’s arbitration years. The deal covers his arb window and buys out at the least two free agent seasons.
It’s one other vital 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 biggest 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 take a look at any cease. As a former prime 35 total draft choose who had hit properly within the minors, he was a smart waiver goal. The A’s definitely didn’t envision it figuring out this properly, although.
The righty-swinging Rooker has grow to be not solely one of the profitable waiver claims in current reminiscence however one among baseball’s greatest hitters. He popped 30 house runs in 526 plate appearances to earn an All-Star choice in 2023. Whereas he was snubbed from the Midsummer Basic final season, Rooker took one other main step ahead. He related 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 house runs. Solely Aaron Decide, Shohei Ohtani, Anthony Santander and Juan Soto hit extra. Amongst hitters with at the least 500 PAs, Rooker ranked within the prime 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 by greater than 1100 plate appearances in an A’s uniform. He’s within the prime 15 in slugging proportion 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 first rate quantity of swing-and-miss to his recreation. Rooker has fanned in additional than 30% of his plate appearances with the A’s. Final yr’s manufacturing was pushed partly by a .362 common on balls in play that’ll be troublesome to take care of. Rooker makes a ton of arduous contact, although, so he’s in all probability in line for a modest BABIP regression moderately 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 slicing his strikeout fee to a way more manageable 24.1% clip throughout that stretch. It stays to be seen whether or not he’ll preserve that degree of contact, however it’s an encouraging growth that presumably affirmed the entrance workplace’s confidence in his hitting acumen.
Even when he doesn’t hit .290 whereas pushing 40 house runs on an annual foundation, Rooker ought to stay an impression bat. The A’s have made clear they envisioned him because the long-term anchor of their lineup. The crew reportedly took him off the market upfront of final summer time’s commerce deadline. That they had no real interest in permitting commerce rumors to rekindle in the course of the offseason. GM David Forst declared inside per week of the offseason starting that the A’s weren’t dealing Rooker. They’re doubling down by committing to him by at the least the 2029 season.
Rooker surpassed three years of main league service final season. He was getting into his first of three arbitration seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz had projected a $5.1MM wage for subsequent yr. Whereas the precise wage breakdown is unknown, Rooker will reportedly obtain $30MM over what would have been his arbitration window. That leaves a median of $15MM yearly for the 2 free agent seasons. It’s not fairly a front-loaded contract, however it seems Rooker will make a bit of extra within the subsequent couple years than he would have had he gone by the arbitration course of.
The crew makes that tradeoff for the prospect to maintain him at below-market charges in the course of the 2028-29 seasons — that are scheduled to be their first two years in Las Vegas. The A’s didn’t have any cash assured past 2027. Severino and up to date commerce pickup Jeffrey Springs had been their solely gamers signed previous subsequent season.
Extra to come back.
