TORONTO -- The beauty of this Athletics offense lies in its depth. Almost any hitter in the lineup is capable of carrying the team on any given night.
Ideally, several hitters up and down the lineup will be swinging well all at once. Sometimes, however, you need someone to signle-handedly lift you to victory.
Shea Langeliers almost did on Friday night.
The slugging catcher could not have done much more in a 3-2 walk-off Opening Day loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. Langeliers blasted a pair of solo home runs, including a game-tying 414-foot dinger off Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman in the ninth, before the A’s were walked off on an RBI single from Andrés Giménez in the bottom half.
Langeliers became the fourth player in franchise history with a multihomer game on Opening Day. The three others:
Tyler Soderstrom, 2025
Khris Davis, 2017
Jason Giambi, 2000
Of the previous three, only Davis had three hits on the day.
“I feel great at the plate,” Langeliers said. “I’m confident in my approach and confident in myself. I’m just looking to be consistent throughout this year.”
Langeliers’ first-day firepower was a continuation of a scorching hot Spring Training, in which he crushed seven homers and hit .348 with a 1.335 OPS in 19 games. But to find the origin of his hot streak, you really have to go back to his second-half surge last season. Over his final 57 games of 2025, Langeliers hit .328 with a 1.018 OPS and 19 homers.
Last year was really a coming-out party for Langeliers as one of the top hitting catchers in baseball. He put together a career-best season with 31 homers, 72 RBIs and an .861 OPS in 123 games. His only issue in gaining more league-wide recognition was that he was overshadowed by a historically great season by another catcher within his own division: Cal Raleigh. But as Langeliers showed on Friday, he might not be far behind the Mariners' star backstop when it comes to production.
“He’s unbelievable,” said A’s starter Luis Severino, who limited Toronto to two runs on three hits and three walks in five innings. “He’s a great catcher and a great hitter. … If he’s healthy, there is no achievement he can’t get to.”
Aside from Langeliers, though, the rest of the A’s lineup went hitless. The struggles began against starter Kevin Gausman, who racked up 11 strikeouts -- eight of which came on his signature splitter -- then continued against Toronto’s bullpen, which allowed just four baserunners in the final three innings.
“Sometimes you have to give credit to a good outing,” Kotsay said. “Gausman had the split dialed in. He was painting the bottom of the zone and, obviously, keeping our hitters off balance.”
Flat offensive nights like these are something the A’s hope will be a rare occasion. That will need to be the case, because they aren’t shying away from their identity. Entering this season, this offense is projected by many to rank as a top-five unit across MLB. The big bats in their lineup -- Nick Kurtz, Langeliers, Brent Rooker and Tyler Soderstrom are the headliners -- will need to produce up to par with those projections.
“For us, offensively, our expectation is to score enough runs to win games,” Kotsay said. “Especially when it’s a 3-2 ballgame like tonight.”
For this young Athletics squad with playoff aspirations, their Opening Day matchup was rather fitting.
As each A’s player lined up along the right-field foul line at Rogers Centre for Friday night’s pregame festivities, all they had to do was look across the diamond at the Blue Jays for an example of what type of year-to-year jump is possible.
We are all familiar with where the Blue Jays’ season went in 2025. They won 94 games, captured the American League pennant and pushed the Dodgers to the brink in the World Series before falling painfully short in Game 7. What you may forget, though, is the year before, when Toronto went 74-88 and finished last in the AL East.
That 20-win improvement by the Blue Jays from ‘24 to ‘25 represents a blueprint for the A’s -- who went 76-86 last season and have built a young core similar to that of Toronto’s -- to follow.
“The belief in this clubhouse is there,” Langeliers said. “We know what we’re capable of. The [Blue Jays] did that and then they were one game away from winning the World Series. I feel like we’re capable of going on a similar run.”