Rooker among MLB's best with 'no doubt' home runs

OAKLAND -- Brent Rooker is assembling one of the better offensive seasons for the A’s in quite some time, adding another feather in his cap on Sunday.

Belting his 28th home run in the first inning of Oakland’s 3-2 loss to the Dodgers at the Coliseum, Rooker notched his 80th and 81st RBIs on one swing, becoming the first A’s player to reach 80 RBIs in a single season since Matt Olson (111) in 2021.

Enhancing Rooker’s accomplishment is the efficiency in reaching the milestone. Olson did not reach his 80th RBI in that ‘21 campaign until his 116th game, while Rooker got there in just his 98th game of ‘24. In fact, Rooker is the fastest A’s player to reach 80 RBIs since Khris Davis, who got there at 97 games in 2018.

"He just continues to keep impressing,” manager Mark Kotsay said of Rooker. “The focus for him right now is just to continue to help the team win, which is awesome."

More times than not, Rooker long balls translate to wins. The A’s are 16-10 in games when Rooker has homered this season, compared to 23-49 in games in which he has played but not homered. They are 30-57 overall in all games without a Rooker home run.

A big reason for that? He is hitting them when it counts. Of his 28 home runs, 19 have come with at least one runner on base, including Sunday’s game-tying two-run blast. Only Yankees superstar Aaron Judge (23) has more homers in such situations.

As for the 80 RBIs, Rooker takes pride in continuing to increase his previous career-best total of 69 from a year ago, crediting part of the success to an improved A’s offense that has created more run-producing opportunities for him this season.

"I’ve got more than I did last year, so that’s a good accomplishment,” Rooker said. “I’m just looking to keep adding on. The fact that I’m driving guys in means, one, I’m producing, and two, the guys in front of me are on base, so it means we’re having success up and down the lineup. … Hopefully, I’ll just continue that trend for these last 50 games or so."

Rooker is also quickly developing a reputation as one of the more prodigious power hitters in baseball. Sunday’s homer was another example, as he tagged a first-pitch fastball from Dodgers starter River Ryan and sent it a Statcast-projected 429 feet to left-center.

Statcast classifies home runs projected to go out at all 30 Major League stadiums as no-doubters. According to these metrics, Rooker’s homer on Sunday was his 20th no-doubter, third most among all MLB players this season. The list is a star-studded group:

1. Aaron Judge (NYY): 25
2. Shohei Ohtani (LAD): 22
3. Brent Rooker (OAK): 20
4-T. Juan Soto (NYY): 17
4-T. Anthony Santander (BAL): 17

"When I’m finding the barrel, it’s going far,” Rooker said. “I think that goes into a lot of gameplanning stuff and knowing when to pick my spots and cheat to a pitch or sit on a pitch and take a chance to drive the ball out of the park."

After Rooker’s homer on Sunday, the A’s collected just four hits the rest of the way. Still, they had their chances against the Dodgers, none bigger than in the fifth with the bases loaded and Rooker at the plate with two outs. Facing reliever Evan Phillips, Rooker fell into a quick 0-2 count and struck out looking to end Oakland’s best threat of the afternoon.

"Just a little backup slider that caught the edge,” Rooker said of the strikeout. “I was a little closer to the plate than I normally am for that at-bat, so it looked to me like it was [a ball]. But I went back and watched it and he got the inside corner there. … I wish I had that at-bat back."

For the A’s, Sunday marked their first time losing back-to-back games since July 7-9 and their first series loss since July 9-11 against the Red Sox. Over that stretch of going 4-0-1 in their previous five series, the A’s got the better of a pair of playoff contenders in the Phillies and Astros. Even this series loss against the Dodgers was encouraging for this rebuilding A’s club, in that all three games were mostly competitive, save for a 10-0 loss on Saturday that got out of hand in the game’s final two innings.

"The series streak was a good run,” Kotsay said. “This series, if you throw that ninth inning [on Saturday] out, we basically played 26 of 27 really competitive innings against a really good baseball team in the Dodgers. Our goal is to continue to win series and continue paying attention to the details like not giving away free bases, which we’ve been doing a good job of."