Langeliers right at home with Texas-sized 3-HR night

ARLINGTON -- Before Tuesday’s game at Globe Life Field was an impromptu college reunion, with three former Baylor University baseball teammates taking pictures together in their big league uniforms. On the field -- roughly 100 miles north of their alma mater -- were A's catcher Shea Langeliers, Rangers pitcher Cody Bradford and Rangers third baseman Davis Wendzel, who would make his Major League debut hours later.

Among the three, there was no doubting who the big man on campus was, at least on this night. Langeliers homered three times and drove in all four of the Athletics’ runs in their 4-3 victory over the Rangers.

All three of Langeliers’ dingers were tape-measure shots at critical moments in the game. The first, a Statcast-projected 404 feet into the left-field seats, tied the game in the second inning. Langeliers’ second solo shot cleared the fence in front of the center-field batter’s eye, 427 feet from the plate. And his ninth-inning, two-run blast off Rangers closer José Leclerc sailed into the Oakland bullpen, 405 feet from home.

“It always feels good to get something like that, when you’re seeing the ball that good,” Langeliers said. “It’s one of those nights -- I was seeing the ball really well, putting good swings on pitches in the zone, guys [were] grinding out at-bats and luckily, I came through for the team tonight.”

With his first career three-homer game, Langeliers propelled the A’s to their first three-game winning streak of 2024. During its 2023 campaign, Oakland didn’t win three consecutive games until June.

Langeliers became the second player in Athletics franchise history to hit three homers as the starting catcher, joining Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane (May 21, 1925, at St. Louis Browns). Langeliers continues to improve at the plate; last year, his first as Oakland’s everyday catcher, he got better as the year went on, with an OPS of .752 in the second half following a .633 mark in the first half.

“He grinded through a year where he really worked hard at the defensive side but also finished up his offensive side pretty well in September,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “For him to start April out the way he has, it’s a really good sign.”

In a battle of Opening Day starting pitchers Tuesday, Oakland’s Alex Wood stood toe to toe with Rangers ace Nathan Eovaldi until Wood’s calf cramps led to his early departure from the game. Wood was generally effective, allowing two runs in four innings, but after he recorded the first out of the fourth, A’s athletic trainers and coaches jogged out to speak with him and Wood threw a few warmup tosses to determine if he could continue. He did, but only for two more batters, as Mitch Spence relieved him to start the fifth.

“I felt it [on] my second-to-last hitter, probably like my last seven pitches, every time I went to push off the rubber, it kept grabbing,” Wood said of the cramp.

Other than Langeliers, few in the Athletics’ lineup had much to offer offensively. Oakland hitters struck out 13 times against Eovaldi and three Rangers relievers, and the A’s mustered only five hits total. But relievers Spence and Michael Kelly kept the Athletics close and rookie fireballer Mason Miller earned his first career save with a scoreless ninth.

Miller didn’t have any sense he was headed in to try and slam the door shut on a win until Langeliers’ game-winning homer zeroed in on the A’s bullpen.

“I’m proud of it, for sure,” Miller said of the save. “We’ve been waiting for a save opportunity to come through. It took a little bit -- but going out there tonight, getting ready quick, obviously Shea coming up huge … I didn’t have a lot of time to think. So it was good.

“We were joking down there [in the bullpen], ‘Just get Shea up one more time.’ And we did, so coming into a moment like that was exciting, and I was glad to come through for the guys.”