There aren't many things that have gone right for the Oakland Athletics so far this season, but Brent Rooker has been a rare bright spot. After his two-homer game Monday against the Angels, Rooker is now hitting .333/.441/.729 through 58 plate appearances this season.
And he hasn't lucked his way into that with a bunch of seeing-eye singles, or anything. Rooker has earned every bit of his production so far, with huge exit velocities and quality-of-contact metrics that back up – 91st percentile in average exit velocity, 87th in hard-hit rate, 96th in expected batting average, 98th in expected slugging percentage … Rookie is crushing the ball right now, and he's doing it with a very good 16.9% strikeout rate.
So is it for real? Probably not, at least not all of it. Rooker is showing solid plate discipline, most notably with just a 24.2% chase rate, but he's still swinging and missing a ton in the early going, especially on pitches in the strike zone. Among 259 players with at least 50 plate appearances, Rooker's 76.5% zone contact rate ranks 241st. That's not a death knell for a hitter – Mike Trout and Aaron Judge are among the hitters ranked below him in that metric – but you have to have pretty special skills to overcome it.
At the very least, that's a reason to expect Rooker's strikeout rate to spike moving forward. He won't hit .333 for the rest of the season, I think it's fair to say. Whether he can remain Fantasy relevant in spite of that will depend on how much of those elite quality-of-contact metrics he can sustain.
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And, for what it's worth, his minor-league track record does provide some reason for optimism there. In 208 games at Triple-A, Rooker has hit 61 career homers with a .274/.387/.590 line. That's inflated by Rooker being an older player and by playing in the PCL, but it does suggest that the power is at least pretty legitimate, especially when combined with his elite quality-of-contact metrics, and it suggests he could sustain some level of Fantasy relevance moving forward.
I'm not ready to suggest Rooker is a must-roster player in Fantasy, but if you need some pop from an outfield spot, he's worth a look at least. I'd rather have Joey Gallo, who remains under-rostered at 55% in CBS Fantasy leagues; I would also rather have Jorge Soler, who remains similarly under-rostered at 58%. But, if those guys aren't available, Rooker seems like a nice consolation prize.
Here are some other waiver-wire targets from Monday's action:
Busch is a top-100 prospect getting the call, which is typically the kind of player we all rush out and grab. In this case, I'm not sure he really needs to be a high priority. Busch is a career .277/.363/.484 hitter with 23 homers in 132 Triple-A games, and if he was going to get a chance to play every day, I'd be pretty intrigued by him getting the call. However, it seems unlikely that his stay in the majors will be a long one, as he's getting called up to replace Max Muncy, who is going on the paternity leave list. That will likely be just for a day or two, and Busch could be back in the minors when Muncy is back. So, don't make him a high priority, but if you have a roster spot to play with, Busch is a talented player who could get more run than expected if you want to take a flier.
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Jung is starting to look like the guy we hoped he would, sporting a .282/.330/.494 line after his two-homer game Monday. He's hitting the ball well, sporting a pretty massive .470 expected wOBA on contact, with a pull-oriented approach that is generating a ton of line drives. The limiting factor is the plate discipline, as Jung is now up to a 31% strikeout rate, which might make it tough for him to sustain a .282 batting average – his expected mark is .259, though, which would be good enough if the power is real. Jung isn't a superstar, and he certainly isn't a perfect hitter, but he's been good enough to think he should be pretty good for Fantasy moving forward, especially in Roto leagues where plate discipline is less of a concern.
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I might prefer Steer to Jung. Steer's quality of contact metrics aren't quite as impressive – his expected wOBA on contact is just .369 – but he overcomes that with two factors. One is plate discipline – he strikes out around 50% less often than Jung, which means more balls in play to overcome that quality of contact gap. The other factor is his home park because Steer plays in one of the best in baseball, while Jung plays in one that is closer to average, if not a bit below. Steer hits the ball pretty hard (75th percentile average exit velocity), and while I'd prefer if he was more pull-heavy to maximize his power, his home park obviously helps in that regard. He had two hits, two runs, and two RBI Monday to pull out of a bit of a slump, and I think we should expect better power production than his two homers in 20 games so far. I like buying Steer right now.
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There was once a point where I was a big believer in Matthew Boyd, but we're several years past that point, so I'll view even good starts with a healthy dose of skepticism. He had a pretty good one Monday against the Brewers, limiting them to two earned runs in five innings of work while striking out eight, and the underlying numbers might've been even more impressive – he had 19 swinging strikes in this one, 16 of them coming on either the fastball or changeup. That's uncharacteristic for Boyd, who has long leaned on his slider almost exclusively for whiffs, something that hasn't been the case so far this season. His slider whiff rate is down to 17.8%, while both his changeup and fastball are above 30%. IF he can sustain the gains with those pitches while getting the slider to where it usually is, there could be something here. I am, naturally, skeptical, but given how hard it's been to find good pitching this season, I don't mind taking a flier to see if he figures it out.
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