Brent Rooker Making Return To School Pay Off

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Near the end of last spring, when Mississippi State’s draft-eligible players were starting to weigh whether they were ready to start their professional careers, then-head coach John Cohen and then-hitting coach Nick Mingione sat down for a meeting with Brent Rooker.

Rooker was in the midst of a strong finish to his redshirt sophomore season. He would end up hitting .324/.376/.578 with a team-high 11 home runs and 54 RBIs for the Southeastern Conference regular-season champions. If he wanted to, he would have the chance to go out in the draft, though likely not on the draft’s first day like his teammate Dakota Hudson, who was the final player selected in the first round.

So when Rooker met with Cohen and Mingione, they advised him to stay in college for another year.

“You need to come back here and be the SEC player of the year because you’re that good,” Mingione told Rooker. “You can do that.”

In the end, Rooker decided to stay in school after being drafted in the 38th round by the Twins with the 1,143rd overall pick. Of the 11 Bulldogs drafted last year, he was the lone player not to sign. Instead, following Mississippi State’s super regionals loss to Arizona, he went to the Cape Cod League to continue his development and prepare for his redshirt junior season.

Now, a year later, Mingione’s advice sounds like a prophecy. Rooker has transformed into The Brent Rooker Show, seemingly producing a must-see performance every game. He is hitting .404/.502/.885 with 19 home runs and 17 stolen bases and seems likely to become college baseball’s first 20-20 player since Andrew Benintendi. He leads the SEC in nine statistical categories, including all three triple crown statistics. He also has a shot at the national triple crown, as he ranks ninth in batting, third in home runs and second in RBIs (65).

Rooker’s incredible performance at the plate has helped power Mississippi State (32-17) back to the top of the SEC. The No. 6 Bulldogs are tied for first place in the conference at 16-8, putting them in position to repeat as regular-season SEC champions. Injuries have ravaged Mississippi State this season, but with the most dangerous hitter in the lineup and a strong team belief, they have persevered.

Rooker worked hard for this season. He felt good in the fall and early in the preseason. By the season’s second weekend, he felt locked in. That feeling hasn’t abated for more than two months.

“I’m just trying to ride the wave as long as it goes right now,” Rooker said. “I feel good. I’m really comfortable.”

Showing Growth

Rooker has grown as a hitter this season. Last year he was more of a free swinger, striking out in 20.9 percent of his plate appearances. That carried over to his summer on the Cape, where he hit .305/.338/.426 and made the all-star game but struck out in 24.5 percent of his plate appearances.

This year, he is hitting the ball with more authority after getting stronger in the offseason. To go with that, he has also learned greater discipline at the plate. His newfound approach is still surprising even to him at times.

“I’ll be in the box and I’ll take a pitch, and I’ll be like, ‘Wow I could not have done that last year,’” Rooker said.

“It’s things like that, just little things I can see in myself. It’s been a really long process since my redshirt freshman year when I first started to play to last year when I became a full-time guy to this year, where I’m really seeing success. It’s fun to watch myself grow and kind of enjoy all the hard work I’ve put in and the long hours that are kind of starting to pay off.”

Part of Rooker’s transformation as a hitter can be traced to Mississippi State’s offseason of change. It began nearly as soon as last season ended, when both Mingione and pitching coach Wes Johnson left the program, Mingione to become head coach at Kentucky, Johnson to be pitching coach at Arkansas.

Big Changes

The changes weren’t done even as the Bulldogs began fall ball. Athletic director Scott Stricklin was hired away by Florida in late September. Cohen, who had added associate athletic director to his title over the summer when his contract was extended, was promoted a month later to replace him. Cohen’s first order of business as AD was to hire his replacement as baseball coach. He moved quickly to hire Andy Cannizaro, then the Louisiana State hitting coach and recruiting coordinator and a former big leaguer and scout.

Mississippi State was nearing the end of fall practice when Cannizaro arrived in Starkville. He had some familiarity with his new players from competing against them in the SEC West for two seasons. But Cannizaro has rocketed to the coveted position of head coach at Mississippi State thanks in large part due to his ability teach hitting and to inspire and energize a team.

Drawn by those qualities, Rooker quickly gravitated to Cannizaro.

“I hang around him as much as I can, I listen to him talk as much as I can because he’s a guy who’s been to where I want to go, which is the major leagues,” Rooker said. “He’s been a scout and he knows what good hitters look like. I just want to hang around him and listen to what he says and soak up as much information as I can.”

In Cannizaro and Mingione, Rooker has been able to work with two of the best hitting coaches in the country. But his education goes well beyond his coaches.

“He’s in love with hitting,” Mingione said. “He loves the act of it, he love talking it, he loves studying it, he loves watching video of it. The guy is in love with hitting.”

Rooker especially likes watching video of hitting—both himself and big leaguers. He said the two players he watches the most are Barry Bonds and Josh Donaldson. When he watches the MVPs and other big leaguers, he is looking for commonalities in their swings, principles he can apply to his own game.

What Rooker has found, he said, is they store their energy in their hip instead of their knee. At some point during their load, they bring the bat to a vertical position, creating a separation between their hips and shoulders, allowing them to more easily adjust to the pitch and to generate bat speed. They attack every pitch with the intent to swing, stopping themselves when they don’t get a pitch to their liking.

“I try to apply those principles to my swing,” Rooker said. “Make it my own in a sense, but keep those constants and those principles that those guys all do, and try to make my swing as good as it can be.”

Wasn’t An Easy Trip

Rooker has made his swing the most dangerous in the country. But getting it there has been a long journey.

Rooker went to Evangelical Christian School, a small private school in suburban Memphis. He was an outstanding athlete, starring on the baseball and football field, where he played quarterback. As a senior, he joined the basketball team after not playing since middle school, and became the starting point guard.

Ryan Porter took over as the ECS baseball coach in 2011, Rooker’s sophomore year. He had already heard some about what Rooker had done as a freshman and remembers him as a “tall, strapping” player.

“He was a pretty good athlete, but one of those kids that got more and more athletic every year in high school,” Porter said. “He had a really good mind for his swing. He was a smart baseball player. That’s the thing he had from the get-go.”

Rooker helped lead ECS to two state championships in baseball and a state title game in football but was not a highly recruited player in either sport. After his sophomore year, only Memphis had shown much interest in Rooker. But Porter believed in his talent and he began to tell Lane Burroughs, then Mississippi State’s hitting coach, about his star player.

Porter was still a relatively new coach and didn’t know any high-level college coaches except Burroughs, whom he had played with at Mississippi College. That connection gave him the confidence to push Rooker on Burroughs.

“If I hadn’t known Lane Burroughs, I don’t know if I’d tossed him out to a random assistant coach I didn’t know for fear of overshooting his ability,” Porter said. “I wasn’t worried what Lane thought.”

Burroughs, now the head coach at Louisiana Tech, finally relented and went to see Rooker play. The game he picked was not against one of ECS’ better opponents and he stuck around for only a few at-bats. When Porter saw him leave the game early, he was worried. He didn’t need to be.

“The night I saw him, it wasn’t a very good high school team and he was hard to evaluate,” Burroughs said. “But I saw tremendous bat speed, a guy that could run, a guy that at the point of contact was in a great position. I could tell he knew how to hit by the way he stood in the batter’s box and went about his business.”

Burroughs convinced Cohen to bring Rooker in for a visit and they got him committed. The raw tools were there, but the emphasis was on raw. Not only was Rooker not facing elite competition in high school, he had never concentrated on baseball. His athleticism was impressive, but when he got to Mississippi State in the fall of 2013, his lack of polish was apparent.

Rooker did not come to school with the expectation that he would take a redshirt, but he realized that would be in his best interest after seeing where he stacked up after a few scrimmages. The Bulldogs were coming off a runner-up finish at the College World Series and he simply wasn’t ready for that level of competition. Rooker never considered leaving Mississippi State for a junior college or a smaller school.

“I knew Mississippi State was where I wanted to be,” he said. “I committed to that program for a reason—for the atmosphere around it, just what it means to be a Mississippi State Bulldog—and I wanted to see that through.

“I knew the ability was in me, it just hadn’t come out yet. So I needed to take a year or two to grow into it.”

Rooker certainly has grown into it, but it has taken a lot of hard work. It has been his video study, his hours in the cage, his redshirt year, his summer on the Cape. Through it all, Rooker has been determined to get better, a quality Burroughs first saw when he was recruiting him.

“It goes back to character and hard work,” Burroughs said. “He’s going to be a success in life whether he’s a big league player or he has a normal job like the rest of us. His makeup and character will allow him to be successful no matter what.”

Cannizaro first realized Rooker was in for a truly special season Sunday, Feb. 19, the final day of opening weekend. Mississippi State had split its first two games, losing on Opening Day to Texas Tech and beating Western Illinois the following day. The Bulldogs were playing the first game of a doubleheader and had seen their four-run lead against the Leathernecks disappear in the ninth inning, sending the game to extras.

The bottom of the 11th inning opened with Luke Alexander drawing a walk. Ryan Gridley was hit by the next pitch, putting runners on first and second with no outs for Rooker.

Cannizaro, as is his custom, was standing on the top step of the dugout next to the on-deck circle. Before walking to the plate, Rooker turned to his new coach and asked if he wanted him to bunt the runners over.

“No, I want you to go hit the ball in the seats and win the ballgame,” Cannizaro said.

In the fictional version of The Brent Rooker Show, he would have blasted the next pitch into Dudy Noble Field’s famed Left Field Lounge, setting off fireworks. The real life version was nearly as good. Rooker drove the fourth pitch of the at-bat off the left field wall to give Mississippi State a 10-9 victory.

“It was kind of cool, very coachable,” Cannizaro said with a laugh. “He’s an awesome player and he’s a lot of fun to watch.”

Rooker said he didn’t feel locked in at the plate until the next Friday when he went 4-for-4 with two home runs in an 11-6 victory against Indiana State. He has taken off in the weeks that have followed, reaching a fever pitch the first week of April.

In five games against Florida International and Kentucky from April 4-8, The Brent Rooker Show delivered its best performance to date. He went 10-for-16 with six home runs, five walks and 13 RBIs. Three of his home runs came in a 10-6 victory in the middle game of the series against the Wildcats.

So Good

Rooker’s performance was astounding even to his teammates. At one point during the weekend, following one of Rooker’s home runs, center fielder Jake Mangum, who won the 2016 SEC batting title as a freshman, walked through the dugout screaming, “So good. He’s so good.”

Gridley has settled into the three-hole in the Bulldogs’ lineup, hitting behind Rooker. He said he has never seen anyone as locked in as his roommate.

“I get the best seat in the house right here, I’m on deck,” Gridley said. “It’s amazing.”

Rooker’s incredible season has raised his draft stock significantly. His numbers compare favorably to any college hitter in the last 10 years, including College Player of the Year winners Kris Bryant, A.J. Reed and Kyle Lewis. But he will not match Bryant and Lewis’ status as top-15 picks. He is 22 years old, making him older than nearly any player being considered for the first day of the draft. He also does not play a premium defensive position. He has manned first base this spring for Mississippi State out of necessity, making himself into a capable defender. He is naturally an outfielder but spent a lot of time at DH early in his career. He seems likely to be drafted closer to where Reed, who went 42nd overall in 2014, was picked than at the start of the first day.

Those close to Rooker believe that whatever team drafts him will be getting a future big leaguer. But regardless of how future seasons of The Brent Rooker Show plays out, the 2017 version has been must-see. And as the season reaches the stretch run, Mississippi State is just trying to figure out how to get him in the batter’s box as often as possible.

“He’s a great hitter that’s going really good,” Cannizaro said. “He’s seeing the ball early, he’s taking marginal pitches that could go one way or the other, he’s taking them with confidence. It’s fun to watch him because he has such an advanced game plan and such an advanced approach right now. He’s doing things that professional hitters do at an amateur level.”