Only on 5: One-on-one with Germantown’s Brent Rooker following contract extension with A’s

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) -Back home in the 901 for the offseason, the work never stops for Brent Rooker

Even after recently signing a new contract with the Athletics that could be worth $90 million over six years.

“Relief in a lot of ways,” says Rooker on the emotions of signing the extension. “I mean I’m excited to be where I’m at. I love our team, I love our guys, I love the direction we’re headed. So the opportunity to be a part of that for the next five years was something I wanted to jump at.”

In 2022, Rooker showed up to Spring Training with the A’s as a relative unknown. That season, he broke out and made his first All-Star Game. In 2023, the encore was even better, with the Germantown native cementing himself as one of the best hitters in the sport on his way to winning a Silver Slugger Award.

Now, he’s the unquestioned face of the A’s franchise.

“It’s crazy, and it’s happened quick,” says Rooker on his rise over the past two years. “It feels like it’s been a long time coming, but at the same time it kind of feels like it happened overnight.”

Rooker is also the centerpiece of a new era for A’s baseball. The franchise left Oakland at the end of last season, and will play in Sacramento for at least the next three years ahead of a planned permanent move to Las Vegas.

“We keep saying we don’t want to replace a fanbase, all you want to do is add on to an existing fanbase,” says Rooker on playing in Sacramento. “We want to keep our fans in the Bay, obviously that have been there for 50-60 years. We want to take the A’s fans already in Sacramento, we just want to add on to that fan base and continue to make it grow.”

After years of grinding in the minors just to stick in the big leagues, don’t expect Rooker to rest on his laurels just because he got paid.

He still has a lot to accomplish, including hopefully getting the A’s back to the playoffs for the first time since 2020.

“I want to win a lot of games,” Rooker says. “I want to experience playoff baseball, I want to make a deep postseason run and feel what that’s about; playing in the big leagues in the postseason.

“I think it’s-like I just talked about, the desire to continue to prove yourself. You want to be worth the money, you don’t want to be a bad contract. You want to go out there and prove that you’re worth every dollar that you’re getting. From an internal perspective-I mean my goal in baseball has always been I want to find out how good I can be, and I don’t think I’m there yet.”

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