Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sport
Ryan Phillips

Shea Langeliers Joins Elite Company With Big Home Run

Athletics catcher Shea Langeliers has 20 home runs in three of the first four seasons of his career. | Erik Williams-Imagn Images

Shea Langeliers just joined an exclusive group.

On Monday night, the Athletics catcher led off his team's game against the Washington Nationals with a 402-foot home run to center field. It was the 27-year-old's 20th home run of the season, and helped him hit a major milestone.

According to MLB Stats, Langeliers is only the fifth catcher in major league history to hit 20 or more home runs in three of his first four seasons in the big leagues. A caveat is the player has to have played a minimum of 50% of games at catcher to qualify for the list.

The other players to do it are Cal Raleigh, Mike Piazza, Earl Williams, and Rudy York. That's it. To give you an idea of how rare it is, York made his MLB debut in 1937, Williams broke through in 1970, and Piazza won NL Rookie of the Year in 1993. In an odd twist, all of those players except for Raleigh played on the Athletics at some point during their careers.

Langeliers is having a career year in 2025. He entered Tuesday's game slashing .261/.313/.507, which are all career highs. In 2023 he hit 22 home runs, last season, he hit 29, and this year he's at 20. Meanwhile, his OPS has climbed from .681 in 2023 to .793 in 2024 and now to .820 in 2025.


More MLB on Sports Illustrated


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shea Langeliers Joins Elite Company With Big Home Run.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.