A’s Brent Rooker agrees to five-year extension

The A’s have reached an agreement with the designated hitter Brent Rocker with a five-year, $60 million extension, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports. The deal includes a vesting option for a sixth season that could push the value to $90 million, including escalators. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that the base value of the option is $22 million and that Rooker will earn $30 million over the first three seasons of the deal. This represents what would have been the Bledsoe Agency client’s years of arbitration. The deal covers his arbitration window and buys at least two seasons of free agency.

It’s another significant investment in what has been a huge offseason by A’s standards. As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, Rooker becomes the first A’s player to sign a five-year contract since the club extended its starting pitcher Trevor Cahill for $30.5 million in 2011. It is the team’s second investment of more than $60 million this winter. Last month, they added Luis Severino on a three-year, $67 million free agent contract that represented the largest contract in franchise history.

Two years ago it would have been impossible to imagine Rooker securing such a contract. He came to the A’s on a waiver claim at the start of the 2022-23 offseason. Rooker was a 28-year-old DH/corner outfielder who had bounced between the Twins, Padres and Royals without getting a look at any stops. As a top-35 overall pick in the draft who performed well in the minors, he was a sensible waiver target. The A’s certainly didn’t imagine it going this well, though.

Steed Rooker has become not only one of the most successful waiver claims in recent memory, but also one of the best hitters in baseball. He hit 30 home runs in 526 plate appearances to earn an All-Star selection in 2023. Although he was snubbed from the Midsummer Classic last season, Rooker took another major step forward. He hit 39 homers, 26 doubles and a pair of triples with a whopping .293/.365/.562 batting line in 614 plate appearances.

Rooker finished tied for fifth (along with José Ramírez AND Marcel Ozuna) in home runs. Only Aaron judge, Shohei Ohtani, Antonio Santander AND Juan Soto hit more. Among hitters with at least 500 PAs, Rooker ranked in the top 20 in all three slash statistics. He finished sixth in hits, behind Judge, Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr.Soto e Jordan Alvarez.

That’s now two seasons of borderline elite offensive production. Rooker has a .272/.348/.528 slash in more than 1,100 plate appearances in an A’s uniform. He’s top-15 in slugging percentage and ranks ninth in homers since the start of the ’23 season. He is a medium level presence.

There is a fair amount of swing-and-miss to his game. Rooker has played in more than 30% of his appearances with the A’s. Last year’s production was driven in part by a .362 average on balls in play that will be difficult to maintain. Rooker makes a lot of hard contact though, so he’s probably in line for a modest BABIP regression rather than a huge decline.

The normalization of ball-in-play occurred at the end of last season. Rooker carried an unsustainable .390 BABIP into the All-Star Break. This dropped to .333 in the second half. To his credit, Rooker made up for it by reducing his strikeout rate to a much more manageable 24.1% during that span. Whether he maintains that level of contact remains to be seen, but it’s an encouraging development that presumably affirmed the front office’s confidence in his hitting acumen.

Even if he doesn’t hit .290 while hitting 40 home runs on an annual basis, Rooker should remain an impact bat. The A’s made it clear that they envisioned him as the long-term anchor of their lineup. The team reportedly took him off the market before last summer’s trade deadline. They had no interest in allowing trade rumors to reignite during the offseason. GM David Forst said within a week of the start of the offseason that the A’s would not deal Rooker. They are doubling down on their commitment to him through at least the 2029 season.

Rooker surpassed three years of Major League service last season. He was entering his first of three officiating seasons. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected a salary of $5.1 million for next year. While the specific breakdown is not known, Rooker will reportedly receive $30 million over what would have been his arbitration window. That leaves an average of $15 million per year for the two free agent seasons. It’s not quite an early contract, but it looks like Rooker will make a little more over the next couple of years than he would have if he had gone through the arbitration process.

The team makes that trade-off for the ability to keep him at below-market prices through the 2028-29 seasons, which are expected to be his first two years in Las Vegas. The A’s had no guaranteed money beyond 2027. Severino and the recent resumption of trading Jeffrey Springs they were their only players signed next season.

The A’s revenue sharing status has been a significant storyline this offseason. The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal reported last month that the team may need to push its competitive fiscal balance to around $105 million to avoid an MLBPA complaint. Teams are required to spend revenue sharing money on the on-field product.

Extending Rooker will increase their tax code, though not by much. The contract has an average annual value of $12 million. The AAV is the number used for tax purposes, so it wouldn’t matter how the salaries are distributed. Rooker was already projected to make around $5 million next season. This adds approximately $7 million to the team’s tax code, which will clock in at approximately $97 million (as calculated by RosterResource).

The tax code isn’t finalized until the end of the year, so the rest of the off-season and A-season business can push it further. Tax considerations are relevant but they are not the only reason the A’s made this deal. If they were solely concerned with pushing next season’s CBT numbers, they could have signed a handful of mid-level free agents to one-year contracts.

Rooker turned 30 in November. A five-year commitment spans his age-34 season. There is some risk in a five-year contract for a player in his 30s who doesn’t provide much defensive value. However, if Rooker continued to hit at a level close to this, his arbitration price would still rise rapidly. He could have put himself in position for an AAV in the $20-25 million range once he reached free agency, a number the A’s may not have been inclined to match.

At the same time, it’s easy to see Rooker’s interest in blocking safety. It wasn’t long ago that he looked like a fringe player. He wouldn’t hit free agency until his age 33 season, when a three- or four-year contract might have been the ceiling. Sacrificing some long-term earnings upside to avoid injury risk over the next two seasons is understandable.

This should also solidify Rooker’s place in what appears to be the emerging A-lineup. Lawrence Butler, Jacob Wilson, Tyler Soderstrom, Shea Langeliers, JJ Bleday and rebound candidate Zack Gelof they have promise as an offensive core. The fourth overall pick last summer Nick Kurtz could move as quickly as a polished college hitter. The A’s still need a lot of breakout to compete in 2025, but things are starting to come into focus. Soderstrom and Kurtz fit better at first base, so perhaps there will be a logjam down the line with Rooker stuck at designated hitter. It would be a good problem to have if both young first basemen hit their offensive ceilings and Rooker continues to hit at an All-Star level.

Image courtesy of Imag.