WASHINGTON — Through 394 games as a big leaguer, Shea Langeliers never saw his name written into the leadoff spot before Tuesday night at Nationals Park. After this performance, it may be impossible for Athletics manager Mark Kotsay to bat him anywhere else.
For someone accustomed to batting third or fourth for most of his career, Langeliers sure looked comfortable starting things off for a change. The A’s catcher went out and made history in his first leadoff assignment, crushing three home runs as part of a five-hit effort in a 16-7 blowout victory over the Nationals to become just the second catcher in Major League history to homer three times out of the leadoff spot and first since Travis d’Arnaud on July 15, 2019. And Langeliers is the first player since at least 1900 to have three long balls in his first career game batting leadoff.
Batting a slugging catcher in the leadoff spot might seem a bit unconventional, but there was no complex analysis or data crunching that went into Kotsay’s decision to do so with Langeliers.
The process was simple. Langeliers has been one of the best hitters in baseball over the past few weeks, so it made sense to get him as many at-bats as possible.
“It’s a spot that, you lead off the game once and that’s the last time you lead off,” Kotsay said before the game. “There’s probably times when the four-hole hitter leads off an inning more times than the leadoff hitter in a game. To have him at the top and swinging a really good bat right now, it’s a chance to get us off to a quick start, hopefully.”
It was a quick start, all right. It only took four pitches into the game for Langeliers to clobber his first homer of the game, a booming Statcast-projected 402-foot solo blast off Nationals starter MacKenzie Gore. In fact, Langeliers led off an inning three times on Tuesday, sending a 387-foot homer to left in the fifth and a 419-foot majestic shot to right-center in the seventh to complete his second career three-homer game.
The first homer, Langeliers’ 20th of the year, landed him in rare company. He joined Cal Raleigh, Mike Piazza, Earl Williams and Rudy York as only the fifth catcher to hit at least 20 home runs three times in their first four MLB seasons.
