Shea Langeliers sent his 23rd home run of the season into the seats this week, and if you’re the Boston Red Sox — riding a 14-game winning streak and suddenly sniffing a Wild Card spot — you’re watching that ball leave the yard and thinking about what it’d look like sailing over the Green Monster.
Langeliers, the Athletics’ All-Star catcher, is putting together the kind of season that makes a front office pick up the phone. Through 90 games he’s slashing .260/.329/.490 with an .820 OPS, 18 doubles, and 50 RBI. The power numbers build on a 2025 campaign where he hit 31 home runs with 72 RBI and posted a .277/.325/.536 line — a full breakout that put him on the All-Star map and made him one of the few bright spots on a Sacramento-bound ballclub.
Now the trade deadline chatter has found him. A Sporting News report syndicated through Yahoo Sports identified Langeliers as a potential target for Boston, which has gotten substandard production from the catcher position all year. The fit is obvious to anyone who’s charted his spray chart: Langeliers is a right-handed hitter with a pull tendency, and a righty who yanks the ball to left field is tailor-made for Fenway Park’s 37-foot left-field wall. You don’t need a spreadsheet to see that — though the numbers back it up, and I hate admitting that.
The Red Sox sit at 51-48 after their franchise-record-tying win streak, firmly in the American League Wild Card race. If they keep winning at this clip through July 31, they’ll be buyers, and catcher is the clearest hole on the roster.
But here’s the hitch. The Athletics control Langeliers through 2028 — which lines up with their planned arrival in Las Vegas, where the organization presumably intends to start spending and competing. ESPN’s Jeff Passan listed Boston as a top potential landing spot but pegged the odds of an actual trade at just 10 percent, citing that team control and the Vegas timeline. You don’t trade a 28-year-old All-Star catcher with three-plus years of club control unless somebody knocks you flat with an offer you can’t refuse.
Passan did note that the A’s will listen, and Boston has the ammunition to at least start the conversation. The Sporting News piece pointed to Boston’s pitching depth — both at the major league level and in the farm system — as a potential match. Young arms like Connelly Early and Kyson Witherspoon, plus prospects such as Anthony Eyanson