Shea Langeliers Is Breaking Out — Again

Just because the Athletics are leading their division while the Astros are well below .500 doesn’t mean that the AL West is entirely upside-down. Once again, a catcher is having such an incredible season at the plate that his offense is worth talking about, and if the season ended today, he’d be in the MVP discussion. This time around we’re not talking about Cal Raleigh — who just landed on the injured list shortly after snapping an 0-for-38 slump — but Shea Langeliers. At this writing, the A’s catcher is currently hanging with the big boys on the batting leaderboards and doing things that are worth keeping an eye upon.

The 28-year-old Langeliers entered Friday hitting .340/.397/.623, which is not just great for a catcher, but it’s one of the best lines in baseball. His 179 wRC+ ranks third in the majors behind only Ben Rice and Yordan Alvarez, one point ahead of Aaron Judge, and his slugging percentage is third in the AL, nestled among those same four hitters. He leads all catchers with 12 home runs, tied for eighth among all major league hitters. But what really caught my eye is that his batting average leads the AL.

Yes, batting average is the least important of those slash stats, but as I’ve maintained before, at a time when .300 hitters have become an endangered species — the NL had just one last year, Trea Turner — it’s worth giving a damn about batting average again. Batting average is fun; batting average has entertainment value. When batting averages are low, the game is more static, and right now the 30 teams as a whole are slashing a combined .240/.319/.389, down from .245/.315/.404 last year. If maintained over a full season, this year’s batting average would be the third lowest since 1901, ahead of only 1968 (.237) and 1908 (.239).

It’s true that the league-wide on-base percentage is higher than last year. That’s because walks are up, as I noted earlier this month (9.5%, up from 8.4% last year — for more on why, see Ben Clemens here), but that only increases the extent to which games are (again) slowing down and producing less action. Thus I’m going to continue my batting average boosterism until morale improves.

Plus, catchers leading the league in batting average are only slightly more common than dogs driving cars. You probably already know that it’s a short list of backstops who have won batting titles: four in AL/NL history, namely Joe Mauer (2006, ’08, ’09), Ernie Lombardi (1938, ’42), Bubbles Hargrave (1926), and Buster Posey (2012). It’s far too early to declare that Langeliers is on his way to becoming the fifth, but it’s worth appreciating what’s playing in Small Sample Theater. To return to the metaphor, if you see a dog driving a car, you don’t say, “Nah, he’ll probably get pulled over soon, let’s move along,” you investigate!

First off, given the American League batting average of .239, Langeliers currently has the largest margin above his league of any batting title-qualified catcher:

For that table, I haven’t just stuck to the current threshold for batting title qualification based on 3.1 plate appearances per game, which has been in place since 1957 and which allows for phantom at-bats to be used in determining ranking if a player is short of the mark. Lombardi’s 1942 title and Hargrave’s 1926 title both fit into the table above via an older 100-game threshold, and since more forgiving standards held throughout the high-offense 1920s and ’30s, some other catchers who met those bygone standards are included above. I decided to go this route since it seemed less silly than comparing Langeliers’ sample of 179 plate appearances against a more strict standard.

Anyway, you can see that Langeliers tops the list — that’s .1003 points ahead, which rounds down — with Mauer (.09863 ahead of the league) and Piazza (.09858 ahead) needing to go to the fifth decimal to settle the rankings immediately below him. If you’re wondering why Piazza didn’t win the batting title in 1997, it was because Tony Gwynn hit .372, while Phelps was outdone by Paul Waner’s .373.

Another way to compare a player to his league is to use our Plus Stats, which are indexed in the way that ERA+ is, with park adjustments baked into the calculations and 100 representing league average. Since I didn’t have the luxury of using Baseball Reference’s Stathead to manage the patchwork qualification standards prior to 1957, this one is based on the 3.1-PA per game standard used in our leaderboards.

I like this comparison a bit better, as the park adjustment adds an additional dimension. Langeliers is benefitting from calling Sacramento’s bandbox home, hitting .370/.452/.630 (195 wRC+) in 84 plate appearances there and .315/.347/.618 (165 wRC+) in 95 plate appearances elsewhere — but not enough to distort this comparison entirely. Sutter Health Park isn’t Coors Field or the Baker Bowl.

All of that is a prelude to a deeper look at what Langeliers is actually doing. Now in his fourth major league season, he was originally drafted out of Baylor University by the Braves with the ninth pick in the 2019 draft, and sent to the A’s in March 2022 as one of four players in the return for Matt Olson, who himself is absolutely raking (.294/.371/.629, 174 wRC+). Langeliers reached the majors on August 16, 2022, and for his first two-plus seasons provided solid, but unspectacular offense for the position, albeit with low batting averages; from 2022–24, he hit a combined .215/.276/.432 (98 wRC+), and for the last of those seasons, he hit .224/.288/.450 (109 wRC+) with 29 home runs.

Langeliers jumped to a .277/.325/.536 slash line with 31 home runs and a 132 wRC+ last year. Moving from the pitcher-friendly Coliseum to hitter-friendly Sutter Health Park helped; he went from .197/.270/.406 (96 wRC+) at home to .278/.319/.498 (118 wRC+). But he made other changes as well, some of which show up in Statcast’s measures. Notably, he closed his stance a bit (from 20 degrees open to 18), moved his feet farther apart (from 32.9 inches to 35.7), increased the tilt of his swing (from 29 degrees to 30) but reduced his attack angle (from 12 degrees to 11) and direction (from 6 degrees pull to 3 degrees pull).

Beyond Statcast’s measures, and perhaps more importantly, Langeliers also moved his hands higher, simplifying his swing. Here’s a screenshot from an MLB Network video that shows a progression that carries over into this season (even with the slightly skewed perspective, it’s not hard to spot):

As Langeliers explained to colleague David Laurila last fall, the changes included starting his loading process earlier:

“Everything kind of blends together, so if you’re starting it later you rush through your swing… everybody throws hard, obviously, but the slower and earlier I can be, the swing comes out smoother. It’s not as rushed.

“I want to be at the height of my leg kick before the pitcher releases the ball. If the pitcher has released the ball and my leg is still going up in my load — if I’m starting a little bit late — my launch is going to rush, and a couple of things can happen. I’m either in and out of the zone, or I dump a little early, back here, so I’m under it.”

Langeliers told Laurila that the extra time helped him “hold the leg kick long enough to be able to read the pitch” and allowed him to be flexible as to how far out front he made contact and where he focused on hitting the ball, direction-wise. He also said he had dialed back how hard he tried to hit the ball, and the data support this, though the year-to-year differences from 2024 to ’25 are slight, with his average bat speed and fast swing rate each dropping a bit (from 74.1 mph to 73.8 for the former, and from 42.0% to 39.6% for the latter). The biggest payoff was a much-improved performance against four-seamers, form a .192 batting average and .364 slugging percentage against them in 2024 to a .242 average and a .576 slugging in ’25. While his whiff rate against four-seamers went up slightly, overall he cut his strikeout rate from 27.2% to 19.7%; his 7.5-point drop was the majors’ second largest among players who qualified for the batting title in both seasons, just below Paul Goldschmidt’s 7.7-point drop.

In the video from which that screenshot was taken, Mark DeRosa illustrated how much more quickly Langeliers can get into his swing with his hands higher — and again, they’re higher now than they were last August, to say nothing of last May.

In 2026, Langeliers is swinging even harder now, with an average speed of 75.1 mph and a fast swing rate of 51.7%, over 12 points higher than last year, with his squared-up and blast rates per swing (24% and 14.3% this year, respectively) virtually unchanged, and his exit velocity and related metrics reflecting even better contact:

Langeliers has not only added over two miles per hour to his average exit velocity (boosting him from the 69th percentile to the 91st), he’s similarly done so for his barrel rate (from 69th to 93rd) and hard-hit rate (from 58th to 88th). He’s elevating the ball more consistently (his groundball rate has dropped from 37.3% to 32.2%), and his expected stats are all in the 99th percentile, up from last year’s 52nd, 73rd, and 58th percentile, respectively, in xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA. His 94-point jump in BABIP, from .290 to .384, is the majors’ fourth largest among players with at least 400 plate appearances last year and 100 this year; it doesn’t hurt that he runs very well (81st percentile, up from an already-impressive-for-a-catcher 65th percentile).

Pitch-wise, Langeliers has built on last year’s advances and is absolutely demolishing four-seamers (.324 AVG/.794 SLG), with his xSLG against them jumping from .515 to .791. In terms of pitch groups, which beef up the sample sizes, his year-to-year improvement against fastballs is less dramatic than it is against breaking balls:

Langeliers was pretty good against breaking balls in 2024 but struggled last year. His average exit velocity against those pitches is up nearly eight miles per hour, with his xSLG increasing by 270 points and his xwOBA by 174 points. He’s giving opposing pitchers fewer places to hide; even in small samples, the only pitch in which he’s not hitting at least .324 is the sweeper (.158 in 21 plate appearances).

All told, Langeliers is now in his second consecutive season with extreme improvements, and I’ll note that they’re not just on the offensive side; he’s improved his pitch blocking from -6 runs in 2024 to 0 last year and 1 this year, with his overall FRV improving from -13 to -2 to 0. His 2.4 WAR is well past his 2024 mark (1.9) and more than halfway to last year’s quite respectable 3.9, tied with Judge for second in the league behind Bobby Witt Jr. Langeliers may not be Cal Raleigh, but right now he looks like something special.