Langeliers has multi-homer game, Miller ties A's rookie record

CHICAGO -- Catcher Shea Langeliers has carried a heavy workload behind the plate this season. And like the A’s on a team level, the backstop is pushing toward ending the 2024 season strong.

Langeliers let his bat do the talking on Tuesday. The 26-year-old crushed a pair of homers in the A’s 4-3 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Oakland snapped a three-game losing streak to improve to 7-9 this month, after closer Mason Miller picked up his 26th save of the season -- tying Andrew Bailey (2009) for Oakland’s rookie record.

“This is my first time being at Wrigley,” said Langeliers, who tallied his third multi-homer game of the season and the fifth of his career. “It’s a special night for me personally.”

Langeliers has played 123 games at catcher this season and caught 1,037 1/3 innings, both of which rank second in the Majors behind Seattle’s Cal Raleigh. Despite his heavy workload, he’s closing in on a few notable offensive thresholds as the season nears the finish line.

Langeliers has hit 28 homers, second most by a catcher in A’s history behind Terry Steinbach, who hit 35 in 1996. Steinbach made 137 appearances behind the dish that season. Langeliers also ranks second in homers to Raleigh (30) among all catchers this season.

“At the end of the year,” manager Mark Kotsay said of Langeliers, “to see him continue to put up the at-bats he's putting up right now, after being one of the top, probably, three catchers in the league in games played and innings caught, [it’s impressive].

“This kid’s a grinder. He loves to play the game.”

Langeliers got the A’s on the board in the first inning on Tuesday, when he crushed a two-run homer off of Cubs starter Jordan Wicks. It went a Statcast-projected 408 feet and had a 109.4 mph exit velocity. In the fifth, Langeliers hit a solo shot, which went a projected 418 feet and had a 107.7 mph exit velocity.

Langeliers entered Tuesday in a 1-for-16 stretch over his past five games. That includes one plate appearance in Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the White Sox, when he hit a pinch-hit a solo homer in the ninth inning of the loss. His homers seem to have come in bunches in recent days.

“It's not a linear thing where you're just consistently hitting homers in however many at-bats,” Langeliers said. “You go through those stretches where it's like, you see the ball really well, you're on everything. And then sometimes, it feels like you don't even see the ball. So it's just how baseball works.”

For Miller, Tuesday was another feather in the cap of his breakout 2024 season. The right-hander allowed a one-out solo homer to Ian Happ in the ninth inning on a 103.2 mph four-seam fastball. It marked the fastest pitch hit for a homer in the Statcast era (since 2015). Miller bounced back to record the save, punctuated by a game-ending strikeout of Seiya Suzuki.

“I think it kind of sums up the year I've had,” Miller said of tying the save milestone. “It’s really cool and I’m definitely honored to be part of that historic mark. That's always something that you don't really actively go out and try to get, but it's cool to have and look back on.”

After posting a 15-9 record in July and a 14-12 mark in August, the A’s are looking to make it three straight winning months for the first time since April-June 2021. September is arguably the biggest challenge yet, as 19 of the A’s 25 games this month are against teams competing for the postseason.

The three-game losing streak the A’s snapped marked their longest skid since they dropped five straight games from June 22-26. It speaks to how well Oakland has been playing for an extended period now.

“We were confident coming into September and wanted to finish strong going into next year,” Langeliers said. “[Brent Rooker] made a comment when we won the series in Houston. It's kind of like, ‘It's not shocking to us when we do stuff like that now.’ We show up to the field, we're confident in what we do, and we're just getting better every day. Just trying to finish strong.”

Said Kotsay on Monday: “These guys are grinding, and it's fun to see. They want to get to the finish line strong. … It continues to stand out that they're not shutting it down. They're not trying to coast through this period. They're still working out hard. The gym’s still crowded, the cage is still packed. That's a good sign.”