OAKLAND — The ball had the legs. The ball had the sound. The only question was whether it was fair.
Fair, it was.
Shea Langeliers hit two home runs against the Mariners on Monday at the Oakland Coliseum, the latter being a walk-off, solo home run to lead off the ninth inning, delivering a 5-4 win for the A’s before an announced Labor Day crowd of 12,167.
“I looked at our third base coach Eric Martins’ reaction, and he had turned (around),” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said. “That was the sign to me that it was going to stay fair. Ultimately, I was thinking through preparation for the 10th inning, then I looked up. I heard the sound, and I was like, ‘Ooh, where’d it go?’ I said, ‘Please stay fair.’
“Everything worked out.”
“The way he hit it, I had no doubt it was going to be fair,” said Lawrence Butler, who doubled to extend his hitting streak to 12 games and scored a run. “I only doubted it towards the end. I kind of was like, ‘Oh, it’s hooking.’ But I didn’t think it was going to go foul at all. I thought it was fair the whole way.”
With a pair of home runs, Langeliers is now one of three catchers in franchise history to hit at least 25 homers in a single season, the other two being Gene Tenace (1974-75) and Terry Steinbach (1996).
Langeliers also has an outside chance at joining Steinbach as the only other backstop in franchise history with a 30-homer season. To do so, Langeliers would need to hit five more home runs over Oakland’s 24 remaining games (the most homers Langeliers has hit in a single month is six).
“I would say for sure: it’s definitely a goal,” Langeliers said of hitting 30 homers. “At the end of the day, we have a month left in the season and we’re just trying to finish strong and win as many games as we can. When I’m not focused on myself, and I’m focused on the team, we play better baseball. That’s the goal this last month.”
Osvaldo Bido, fresh off posting a 1.55 ERA in August, allowed four earned runs over 5 1/3 innings. Last month, Bido didn’t have a single start where he allowed more than two earned runs.
The Mariners jumped out to a quick lead when Cal Raleigh hit a two-run homer in the first inning, then expanded their advantage to 3-0 with Julio Rodríguez’s third-inning sacrifice fly. For Logan Gilbert, the lead ace in a Seattle rotation full of aces, a three-run lead is typically plenty. On this afternoon, it was not.
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With two outs in the bottom of the third inning, Lawrence Butler and Brent Rooker traded back-to-back doubles, the latter driving home the former. Following JJ Bleday’s walk, Langeliers launched a no-doubt, three-run homer into the left-field bleachers, giving the A’s a 4-3 lead.
Seattle and Oakland traded zeroes in the fourth and fifth before the visitors had their equalizer in the sixth. On Bido’s 91st and final pitch, Justin Turner lined a single into left field, driving in Rodríguez and tying the game at four.
Following Bido’s departure, Oakland’s bullpen kept Seattle’s offense at bay. T.J. McFarland entered for Bido and recorded two outs, getting the A’s out of the inning with the score still tied. Grant Holman, Michel Otañez, and Tyler Ferguson followed by tossing scoreless innings in the seventh, eighth, and ninth, respectively.
The game remained deadlocked at four apiece until Langeliers blasted his second homer of the day. The A’s were on the other end of a walk-off home run on Sunday as Mason Miller allowed a three-run, game-winner to the Rangers’ Josh Jung, a brutal loss that cost Oakland a series win against the defending world champions.
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“It didn’t work out yesterday when I said, ‘Go foul.’ It stayed fair,” Kotsay laughed.