{"id":93437,"date":"2025-01-07T10:14:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=93437"},"modified":"2025-01-07T10:16:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:16:38","slug":"athletics-brent-rooker-contract-extension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/01\/07\/athletics-brent-rooker-contract-extension\/","title":{"rendered":"Athletics Lock Up Star DH on a Five-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Athletics have secured a key piece of their future, agreeing to a five-year, $60 million contract extension with designated hitter Brent Rooker, according to The Athletic&#8217;s Ken Rosenthal, who cited sources late Monday night. The deal includes a sixth-year vesting option for 2030 that could push it to $90 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1876509137884037484\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ESPN&#8217;s Jeff Passan<\/a> reports that the first three years of the deal will pay Rooker $10 million a season, which would have been his arbitration years. He&#8217;ll average $15 million per season the two seasons following.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Designated hitter\/outfielder Brent Rooker in agreement with A\u2019s on five-year, $60M extension, source tells <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheAthletic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@TheAthletic<\/a>. Vesting option can take the deal to six years, $90M.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/1876506318712066091?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 7, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This significant move demonstrates the As&#8217; surprising commitment to building a competitive roster around Rooker&#8217;s talent. Rooker played for three teams until he joined the Athletics in 2023, where he truly established himself as one of the better hitters in baseball.<\/p>\n<h2>Brent Rooker Commits to A&#8217;s with Multi-Year Contract Extension<\/h2>\n<p>Rooker becomes the first player since the A&#8217;s extended right-hander Trevor Cahill for $30.5 million in 2011. It&#8217;s the club&#8217;s second investment for a long-term deal this offseason as they added Luis Severino on a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/05\/luis-severino-athletics-record-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">three-year deal<\/a> last month. The free agent deal for Severino became the largest contract in franchise history. They also brought in infielder <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/20\/athletics-sign-infielder-gio-urshela\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Gio Urshela<\/a> and left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/14\/athletics-add-southpaw-starter-from-tampa-bay\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Jeffrey Springs<\/a> as they set to begin play in Sacramento next season.<\/p>\n<p>Rooker, who turned 30 in November, put up an All-Star 2023 campaign in his first season with the A&#8217;s. He was better last season, hitting .293 with a .927 OPS, 39 home runs and 112 RBI, becoming the first A&#8217;s player to win a Silver Slugger Award since Eric Chavez in 2002. Rooker became the first A&#8217;s player to finish a season with a batting average of at least .290, 30 home runs and 100 RBI since Miguel Tejada&#8217;s 2002 American League MVP campaign. His 164 wRC+ ranked the seventh highest among major league hitters.<\/p>\n<p>As the A&#8217;s move to Sutter Health Park in Sacramento for the next three years, they are slowly turning the corner toward fielding a more competitive team than they have in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Athletics have secured a key piece of their future, agreeing to a five-year, $60 million contract extension with designated hitter Brent Rooker, according to The Athletic&#8217;s Ken Rosenthal, who cited sources late Monday night. The deal includes a sixth-year vesting option for 2030 that could push it to $90 million. ESPN&#8217;s Jeff Passan reports [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":93438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1071,35],"tags":[3942,12852,2792,3931,988,2570,1660],"class_list":["post-93437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-mlb","category-news","tag-brent-rooker","tag-eric-chavez","tag-gio-urshela","tag-jeffrey-springs","tag-luis-severino","tag-miguel-tejada","tag-trevor-cahill"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93440,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93437\/revisions\/93440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}