How Oakland A’s DH Brent Rooker survived 400-plus minor league games to become an MLB All-Star

OAKLAND — Even on his worst nights — especially on his worst nights — Brent Rooker knew that when he stepped off the baseball field, rolled into the clubhouse and looked at his cell phone, he’d see a text message from his dad, Terry.

“Hey man, keep your head up, keep swinging it,” Terry would often write. “You’re doing great. Keep at it.”

Tuesday night, Rooker’s entire family will be in the stands at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, where the Oakland A’s designated hitter will be suiting up for the American League as perhaps the most unlikely All-Star after the 28-year-old cycled through four teams in two years, struggling to stay in the big leagues.

“It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t get in the game, or if he only gets an at-bat and strikes out, it doesn’t matter,” said Terry Rooker. “He’s here. His peers put him here. Other players voted him here… I’ll be the fat guy in the stands crying.”

Back when Brent Rooker was a three-sport athlete at Evangelical High School in Memphis, Tennessee, his dad never would’ve pictured him as a big league ballplayer, much less an All-Star.

He thought Brent would go to school to play football after he won a 2-A state championship and became a Mr. Football finalist while breaking 18 school records as a quarterback.

“He was getting pretty good attention from some good-sized schools to go play football,” Terry Rooker said. “That’s what he really wanted or thought he really wanted to do. He loved football. And then Mississippi State caught a whiff of him and came to watch him play baseball.”

Brent enrolled at Mississippi State and redshirted his freshman year. It wasn’t until his third year that Rooker took off, leading the team with a .324 average to go with 11 homers and 54 RBI. The Twins drafted him in the 38th round, but Rooker opted to stay in school.

That summer, he earned All-Star honors at the ultra-competitive, prospect-laden Cape Cod League, then put together a stunning collegiate season in which he hit .387 with 23 home runs on his way to being named the National Player of the Year by Collegiate Baseball.

The Twins drafted him again, this time in the first round.

But Rooker never envisioned himself making an MLB All-Star team. He never thought it was possible, despite his success in the minors during his first few years as a professional.

His self-doubt became worse after the 2021 season, his first year given ample opportunity in the big leagues. It was a disaster. He hit .201 with a .688 OPS while striking out 70 times in 189 at-bats, numbers that indicate a player is severely overmatched.

The Twins sent him back to the minors, then traded him to the Padres the following April. The Padres never gave him a chance, then traded him to the Royals in August. After Rooker again looked overmatched in a brief stint with the Royals, they waived him in November.

“I thought that was going to be it for him,” said Terry Rooker. “He had really rough stretches sticking out quite a bit, struggling to hit the ball with any authority at all. I thought that might be it, maybe we’re going to Japan.”

At 27 years old, Rooker was one of the oldest players in Triple-A.

“I felt like, OK, maybe I had my chance, I didn’t perform quickly enough and maybe that’s the only chance I’ll get,” he said. “Maybe the game has passed me by. Maybe I can’t do this.

“But you have to have that belief, keep going in Triple-A and maybe somebody else will give me a shot.”

Up stepped the rebuilding Oakland A’s. They had the roster space and playing time to give, so they claimed him off waivers in November.

“I was like, ‘wow, there’s a ton of ability here,’” said A’s hitting coach Tommy Everidge. “I told him, ‘wow, you’re pretty good man. My goal is to just keep you here.’”

Everidge said Rooker was talented enough, strong enough and experienced enough. He just needed some confidence.

“There were times in spring training, he’d come to me and say, ‘what do you got for me?’” Everidge said. “I’d be like, ‘nothing, you look great.’ Sometimes as coaches, when they ask for help there’s nothing for them to change. When you tell them that, sometimes they’re like, ‘wow, you’re right, there isn’t.’

“I was like dude, I’ve got nothing. You’re hitting rockets all over the field, you’re walking, what else do you want me to say? You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be consistent.”

While the A’s were setting a new MLB record with 23 losses in April, Rooker was the lone bright spot. Getting everyday at-bats primarily as the designated hitter, he hit .353 with nine home runs, second-most in baseball, and earned his first-ever MLB Player of the Week honors.

While many of the game’s brightest stars like Ronald Acuna Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, Wander Franco, Elly De La Cruz and Corbin Carroll are 25 or younger, Rooker, one of 31 first-time All-Stars assembling in Seattle, said “there’s another category of player that takes a bit longer to develop, continues to learn and continues to work and gets to a point later on in their career where they can also contribute. That’s the mindset I’ve always had.”

This season is the first of Rooker’s career that his dad hasn’t texted him after every game.

“I felt like it was time to offer him support in a different way,” Terry said. “We talk every couple days. I try not to talk about baseball with him. We talk about anything but.”

Brent Rooker now has a family of his own, with a 2-year-old daughter who will join him in Seattle this week. He has a good feel for parenting, he said.

“I got lucky,” he said. “I had two great role models growing up in terms of how to be a loving parent, how to support your kid, how to be stern and to drive your kid to have goals.

“And how to do it in a loving and supporting way.”