ANAHEIM -- For as difficult as it is for one singular player to carry his team to a victory, Brent Rooker nearly did that on Wednesday.
Having already slugged a pair of home runs as part of a then-4-for-4 afternoon, Rooker came to the plate in the ninth inning with the Athletics trailing by one run and unloaded on a fastball up in the zone from Angels reliever Reid Detmers.
For a brief moment, it appeared as if Rooker might have just hit his third homer of the day for a game-tying solo blast. Instead, the 368-foot drive died at the edge of the warning track in left-center, caught by center fielder Jo Adell for the penultimate out in a 6-5 loss at Angel Stadium.
“It’s hard in this game to have a perfect day,” Angels manager Ron Washington said. “He went 4-for-4 until that last one when Detmers got him. That was a tough pitch, and he nearly got it out.”
Just several feet short of perfection, Rooker did his best to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Angels by putting the A’s on his back. The slugger finished a triple shy of hitting for the cycle and regained the team lead in homers with his 14th and 15th big flies of the year, slugging a Statcast-projected 412-foot no-doubt solo shot to left in the third and a 408-foot two-run blast to center in the seventh.
It was a performance worthy of a victory in a defeat that left the A’s about as frustrated as they’ve been all year. For the 8 1/2 innings of baseball played on Wednesday, you could say the A’s dominated eight of those frames. They jumped ahead to an early three-run lead and saw starter JP Sears rack up nine strikeouts and depart the game with one out in the sixth and the 3-0 advantage intact. Then, the game went sideways.
Grant Holman entered the game in place of Sears with two runners on in the sixth and walked Mike Trout on a 3-2 fastball that appeared to be placed fully within the upper inside corner of the zone for a strike but was called a ball to load the bases. From there, tempers boiled over. Sears, who was upset by the call while watching from the dugout, was ejected by home plate umpire Gabe Morales, and that walk to load the bases sparked a six-run inning for the Halos.
“It was a 3-2 pitch that wasn’t caught, but it was in the strike zone for strike three,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “It’s a huge pitch. One that you just need called. Gabe is a good umpire, but it’s one that was missed. … It changes the momentum of the game there.”
The team outcome was disappointing for the A’s, who have now lost 24 of their past 28 games. The individual performance by Rooker, however, highlighted what continues to be a season that shows the A's rightfully entrusted him to be one of their franchise cornerstones over the winter, when they signed him to a contract extension that guarantees him $60 million over the next five years with a vesting club option for 2030 that could raise that total to $82 million across six years.
Following Wednesday’s game, Rooker has now reached base safely in 18 of his last 20 games and is batting .380 (30-for-79 with eight doubles, five home runs, 18 RBIs and nine walks) over that span.
It goes beyond those three weeks, though. Rooker, who was an All-Star in 2023 and Silver Slugger in 2024, has often discussed his efforts to increase the lengths of his hot streaks at the plate and limit the bad stretches to as minimal as possible.
Rooker now seems to have mastered the art of consistent hitting. Through 70 games this season, only once has Rooker gone more than two consecutive games without collecting a hit, and even that was only a three-game hitless stretch from May 14-16.
“I think that’s been the defining quality of my first [70] games now,” Rooker said. “I’ve been able to maintain a level of consistency that maybe I haven’t in the past. I haven’t really had one of those hot streaks where I go two or three weeks and put up big numbers yet, but the production has been steady and consistent. I’ve been happy with it so far. My process is working right now. Hopefully, I can maintain the same level of production for another 100 games.”