Oakland Athletics’ Brent Rooker is having the best season of his career so far, leading baseball with a 1.126 OPS through 113 PA. This success is following the Kansas City Royals decision to designate Rooker for assignment following the 2022 season.

The Athletics are Rooker’s fourth team since his promotion to the big leagues in 2020 with the Twins. He was then involved in two trades during the 2022 season, first to the Padres and second to the Royals. He finished the 2022 season going 4-for-32. Before the 2023 season, Rooker was competing for a spot on the A’s roster, and was in consideration to be used in platoon outfield role. He has since secured a spot as an everyday member of the lineup.

Is Rooker’s success here to stay? Let’s take a look.

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Power and Quality of Contact

One thing that Rooker’s always had is his power and his ability to use it efficiently.

In his two seasons with the most plate appearances (2021 and 2023), Rooker has above average hard-hit rates, xSLG, and max exit velocities.

He also has done a good job at limiting ground balls and hitting fly balls and line drives during those seasons.

Based on these trends, it’s not that far-fetched that this year Rooker is seeing better results. His quality of contact has consistently outperformed his results until this point. For the first time in his career, Rooker’s elite actual SLG (.692) is higher than his elite xSLG (.611). Without knowing anything else, it’s safe to say Rooker will regress because it would be near impossible to maintain that pace. But what we are trying to figure out is whether he can keep up the best season of his career, or if he will regress back to where he was in 2021 (.688 OPS).

His xSLG, consistently high hard-hit rates, and ideal batted ball profile is a positive sign. So what’s the catch?

Important note before we continue: There are no noticeable changes to Rooker’s approach at the plate or his swing, which I why I feel comfortable in the two catches below.

Catch #1: Below Average Bat to Ball Skills

Rooker has below average bat to ball skills, so watch out for a jump in strikeout rate.

I expect Rooker’s strikeout rate of 24% to jump about 6% to better line up with his career strikeout rate of 30%.

The graphic below was generated on Baseball Savant and shows the relationship between single season strikeout rate and whiff rate from 2000-2022. There is a strong correlation between the two statistics. This makes sense logically because if you swing and miss a lot you are probably going to strike out a lot as well.

Based on Rooker’s whiff rate of 37%, which falls in line with his career whiff rate, he is likely to finish the season with a strikeout rate of about 31%. There has not been a player going back to at least 2000 who has maintained such a high whiff rate and a had strikeout rate of only 24%.

Another stat backing this potential regression up is Rooker’s in-zone contact rate of 71% (consistent with career), which is 11% worse than MLB average.

Catch #2: Really high BABIP

Rooker’s BABIP (batting average on balls in play) through 113 PA is .339. This BABIP varies dramatically from that of Rooker’s career (.285).

With no noticeable changes to Rooker’s approach or swing, this indicates to me that Rooker will regress back to a BABIP that is closer to that of his career.

But How is Rooker Barreling the Ball So Much More Often?

Rooker’s barrel rate is the highest of his career at 23%. I’m not sure whether this is a trend that will continue or if we are still early in the season and the sample if small (rate stats are changing dramatically day to day). But I have an idea for what might be contributing to this barrel rate.

Rooker is taking advantage of mistakes down the middle. All of his extra base hits have been off pitches that were thrown right down the middle. This is certainly not a bad thing because we want hitters to capitalize on these pitches, but it’s also not that indicative of skill (even the worst hitters in the game can do damage on these pitches).

Concluding Thoughts

While Rooker is performing like an all-star right now, I am not confident that he’ll be able to continue doing so for the entirety of the season because of the following factors:

• No noticeable change to swing or approach.
• Historically below average bat to ball skills.
• 2023 BABIP much higher than career.
• Only capitalizing on pitches thrown right down the middle.

Unfortunately, I believe we’ll see a significant regression in Rooker’s strikeout rate, barrel rate, and overall results as the season progresses. Hope he proves me wrong.