Athletics catcher Shea Langeliers celebrates a solo home run during the fifth inning against the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park on Tuesday in Atlanta. Langeliers entered Thursday leading Major League Baseball with five home runs in the first week of the 2026 regular season.
Jonathan Bachman
Getty Images
The Athletics will play their home opener in West Sacramento on Friday night, with a fireworks show afterward at Sutter Health Park. And the A’s may be ready for a change of scenery and a new stash of baseball bats.
The current sticks haven’t helped much, except for slugging catcher Shea Langeliers, as the A’s as of Thursday ranked dead last in Major League Baseball with a .177 batting average. They were also the last MLB team to win a game, going 1-5 with opening losses to the Toronto Blue Jays and the Atlanta Braves, entering Friday tied for MLB’s worst record to start 2026.
The A’s won’t be home for long. After a needed off day Thursday, they host the Houston Astros for a three-game set this weekend before heading back east for series against the New York Yankees and New York Mets.
“Leaving spring training, it feels like it was a month ago,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay told media after the A’s dropped a 5-1 series finale to Atlanta on Wednesday. “We’ve been on the road, and yet, we get home and we’re going to unpack and pack. We’ve got a good feeling about our home opener, and everyone in Sacramento is excited for us to get back there.”
Shea Bang-eliers on fire
About the hottest bat in baseball is a 28-year-old catcher who was born in Oregon and raised in Texas.
Langeliers has clubbed a Major League-leading five home runs and driven in eight for the A’s. He has a .375 batting average. He homered in five of his first six games, which tied him with Gabby Hartnett in 1925 for the most by a primary catcher in his team’s first six games of a MLB season. Hartnett played for the Chicago Cubs from 1922-1940.
Langeliers had three homers in his first two games, joining Hall of Famer Al Simmons in 1930 as the only players in franchise history to do so.
Otherwise, the A’s struggled at the plate against Toronto, who reached the World Series last season and fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. The A’s struck out 50 times in their losses to the Blue Jays, tying baseball’s modern era — dating back to 1900 — for the most for a team through its first three games.
After beating the Braves 5-2 on Tuesday, Langeliers told media: “It feels good to get the first one. We haven’t been playing bad baseball up to this point, so it’s just kind of a matter of when we were going to break through, and now we go.”
Said Kotsay of his slugger on Wednesday, “Shea had a great road trip. He had a great spring training. We didn’t get any production from the other guys on this road trip that are going to give us production. That’s the story of the road trip.”
Langeliers finished last season with a .277 batting average and 31 home runs, more than earning his “Bang-eliers” nickname. And, in one of 2025’s most thrilling A’s wins in West Sacramento, hit a go-ahead grand slam against Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, the American League’s best starting pitcher of 2024 and 2025 who won the league’s Cy Young Award each year.
How are the Astros?
Houston opened the season 0-2 with setbacks to the Los Angeles Angels but have since won five straight, including victories of 8-1 and 9-2 over the Boston Red Sox. Friday is the team’s first road game of 2026.
Yordan Alvarez bashed a two-run homer in the 8-1 win over Boston on Monday, his third of the season. He is batting .417 and entered Friday with a 1.480 on base plus slugging percentage — first in the American League, with Langeliers ranked second at 1.400. Carlos Correa launched a three-run homer in a 6-4 effort over Boston to sweep the series.
The Astros came into Thursday tied for first in MLB with 45 runs, second in slugging percentage at .464 and second in on base percentage at .366.
Though the A’s ended 2025 with a 76-86 record and missed the postseason, some of their best moments of the year came against the Astros, a divisional rival. Star first baseman Nick Kurtz, who won the American League Rookie of the Year award unanimously, last June hit two walk-off home runs against the Astros in the same week.
A month later in Houston, Kurtz became the first rookie and 20th player ever in MLB history to hit four home runs in a game.
Athletics first baseman Nick Kurtz celebrates his walk-off home run for a 3-1 victory against the Houston Astros at Sutter Health Park on Monday, June 16. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com
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Joe Davidson has covered sports for The Sacramento Bee since 1989: preps, colleges, Kings and features. He was in early 2024 named the National Sports Media Association Sports Writer of the Year for California and he was in the fall of 2024 inducted into the California High School Football Hall of Fame. He is a 14-time award winner from the California Prep Sports Writer Association. In 2021, he was honored with the CIF Distinguished Service award. He is a member of the California Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Davidson participated in football and track in Oregon.