Brent Rooker Addressed a Key Hole in 2024

I’ve been a fan of Brent Rooker since he was crushing baseballs at Mississippi State, so it was exciting to see him elevate his offense in 2023 after three years of struggling in the majors. His improvements stemmed from changes he made to his load. He added larger, slower movements as he prepared to swing, which helped him to generate more power while keeping his body under control. To do this, he switched from a simple toe tap to a more dramatic foot hover, allowing him to do a complete hand row while loading and giving him more time to sync the rhythm of his upper and lower body before exploding toward the ball.

The result was a breakout season in which he batted .246 with 30 home runs and a 126 wRC+. Despite his improvements, though, Rooker was not a finished product. Strikeouts have always been part of his game, so his 32.7% strikeout rate wasn’t all that surprising even after his adjustments. Teams accept whiffs as a necessary tradeoff for more power, but all these strikeouts were indicative of a hole in Rooker’s swing that limited his value.

From 2020-2023, Rooker had one of the steepest swings in baseball, making it easier for him to launch the ball in the air. But unlike other steep hitters, such as Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman, Rooker didn’t have the variability to alter his swing to get to pitches outside of his wheelhouse. This left him exposed to high fastballs. Even as he slightly dropped his VBA in 2023, he still ran a 40% whiff rate and .285 xwOBA on pitches at the top of the zone. That was the 16th-worst whiff rate out of 217 hitters who saw at least 1,500 pitches that season.

This all relates to the balance that hitters with steeper swings have to strike. Yes, it’s easier to create launch with a steeper angle (duh!), but you don’t want to be one dimensional to the point where you’re taking the same swing every time. It’s a problem that a lot of younger hitters are forced to reckon with when they reach the big leagues because pitchers simply have nastier stuff and are better at executing. Although Rooker developed a better idea of how he could be successful in the big leagues, he still had a major hole to address. Boy did he do that this past season!

Across 614 plate appearances this year, Rooker was one of the best hitters in baseball, batting .292 with 39 homers, a 164 wRC+, and a .510 xwOBACON (99th percentile), while his strikeout rate dropped to 28.8%. Those are big improvements across the board. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his success this season came with a flatter swing, which had a positive impact on his performance at the top of the zone:

It’s a simple story to track. On average, Rooker’s swings were flatter at contact, giving him a better chance to be effective at the top of the zone where pitchers were likely to target him this season. He took the biggest hole in his game and made it a smaller one; as a result, his strengths played up more. Of course, that’s easier said than done, so it’s worth examining how he did it. Now comes the fun part of the analysis.

Thinking in terms of reciprocal movements, in order to get to a different angle at contact, it seems likely that Rooker changed his initial position. And what do you know? That’s exactly what happened! Once again, he altered his setup. The following swings are all against fastballs in the upper third of the zone, three from 2023 and three from this past season:

2023

2024

Here, you’ll notice two changes that had a direct impact on the path of his barrel: His hands are higher and his stride leg is slightly open. He most likely opened up his front leg to improve his balance and/or change his rotational direction. Right now, though, I’m more interested in his adjusting his hand position.

Typically, batters raise their hands to make it easier to maintain a flatter barrel, make contact deeper in the zone, and shorten their swing length. That all sounds wonderful, but some sluggers refrain from this adjustment because it becomes more difficult for them to create launch. Turns out, that wasn’t the case for Rooker; his flatter swing was still steep enough to crush balls in the air.

The other benefit here is just as important. Having higher hands allowed him to make contact deeper in the zone. Look at the final clip above from 2024. Even though he was late on this fastball, he could still rip a single to right center. We don’t have swing length data from 2023, so we can’t say for sure that Rooker’s swing was shorter in 2024, but batters with higher hands tend to have shorter, flatter swings. Pitches at the top of the zone get on batters more quickly than pitches in the middle or lower thirds. To hit those high pitches, batters need to get their barrels into the zone sooner, and shorter, flatter swings cut down the space that batters need to cover to get to the point of contact. This adjustment would explain Rooker’s improvement on pitches up in the zone.

Rooker’s path to stardom has been a fantastic player development story. He was not complacent after his initial breakout in 2023. Instead, he made additional adjustments to his profile. Many players want to fix their weaknesses, but it’s incredibly hard to do so. That Rooker identified and addressed the hole in his game so quickly is a testament to his talent and makes me more confident that he’ll continue to be one of the game’s top hitters for a while.