Athletics at Seattle Mariners

SEATTLE – For as impressive a start to the season as Shea Langeliers is off to, his one bugaboo, somewhat surprisingly, has been struggles facing left-handers, entering the day hitting .190 vs. southpaws after batting .367 against them last year. As he showed Tuesday, though, it’s much too early to read into splits. Righty or lefty, if Langeliers is up in a big spot, the Athletics have come to expect him to come through. He did just that in the seventh inning against lefty Gabe Speier, launching a Statcast-projected 417-foot solo shot into the seats just to the right of center field at T-Mobile Park to provide the A’s some breathing room in an eventual 5-2 victory. “That was a big at-bat,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “Any time you can add on to a lead, that gives the relievers a little more cushion and they can afford to make a mistake.” Homering for a second straight day, Langeliers is now up to eight home runs for the season, tied for fourth-most in MLB. When it comes to franchise history, Langeliers’ eight big files rank second among A’s players who have primarily played catcher through the team’s first 24 games of a season. That quirky caveat is necessary here, because the record belongs to Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx, a first baseman for most of his illustrious career who hit nine home runs while catching in 23 of the first 24 games of the 1935 season for the Philadelphia A’s before going back to playing mostly first the rest of the year. Playing in the house where Cal Raleigh emerged as the top catcher in baseball last year, the A’s slugging backstop continues to statistically perform as the top catcher in MLB so far in ‘26. Langeliers leads all catchers (min. 80 at-bats) in homers, batting average (.312), on-base percentage (.379), slugging (.613) and OPS (.992). Langeliers isn’t just getting it done with the bat, either. His pitchers consistently rave about his abilities behind the dish. On Tuesday night, he backhanded a pitch low in the zone from starter Jacob Lopez and fired an 85.3 mph dart to second base to nab Cole Young for the second out of the fourth. For the season, Langeliers has also been much more effective at blocking pitches, ranking in the 97th percentile of all Major League catchers in Blocks Above Average after he sat in the 45th percentile of that category in ‘25.