NORTH PORT, Fla. — As Shea Langeliers progressed through the latter half of his Baylor career, he began to realize his arm might be special.
Not only did he have the arm strength, but he began learning more about the running game. Knowing the counts and situations. Understanding when base runners liked to run. Anticipating everything.
“The biggest part is just anticipation,” Langeliers said, “almost like you want somebody to take off and anticipating it at that level, and you’re ready for it and excited about it.”
Among his tools, Langeliers’ arm is perhaps his most eye-popping trait. It’s elite and, if you follow the Braves, you know this.
Langeliers, whom the Braves selected ninth overall in the 2019 MLB draft, won a college Gold Glove at Baylor. In the minors last season, the catcher threw out 31 of 74 runners.
All of this, plus a nice offensive bump last year, has Braves fans picturing him at Truist Park.
The Braves expect Langeliers to play a full Triple-A season in 2022 before assessing his big-league readiness. Still, Atlanta’s No. 2 prospect on MLB Pipeline has continued to amaze with his arm.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked people who know Langeliers – including those around him at camp and his college coach – about the first time they saw his elite arm in person. Here are their responses.
Steve Rodriguez, Baylor head baseball coach
When Baylor recruited Langeliers, its coaches knew the high schooler had a cannon.
Then they got him to campus. They saw the details, and they began to understand they had something pretty special. And when games started, Langeliers began validating their beliefs.
“Teams would really try to test it and he would throw out three or four on a Friday, and they would just stop running (the rest of the weekend) because they were running into outs,” Steve Rodriguez, Baylor’s head baseball coach, said by phone Monday. “You’re almost wanting them to run just because we knew we had a really good chance at getting an out out of it. When you see it for the first time, you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty good.’ But then when you see it in the game and it actually gets better, that’s when you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s really, really good.’”
Something some people may not think about with Langeliers: Those who have seen him play rave about his athleticism. He’s faster than you might think. (Braves prospect Trey Harris – more from him later – said Langeliers was probably the third- or fourth-fastest player on Double-A Mississippi’s team in 2021).
The athleticism allows Langeliers to make plays other catchers can’t.
“The ability to pick up a bunt and do whatever he wanted to with it, or block a ball and have a guy try to go on a ball in the dirt and he throws them out by 15 feet to second base or third base,” Rodriguez said. “Any time, as long as the ball stayed within the dirt area, there was a chance for an out.”
Bryce Elder, Braves right-handed pitching prospect
“I remember exactly where I was,” Bryce Elder said when asked if he had a story from the first time he noticed Langeliers’ rocket arm.
On this day, Langeliers’ high school team was playing a winner-take-all game for the district title. (Langeliers attended Keller High in Texas, which is about 35 miles down the road from Elder’s high school, Decatur High.). Elder’s team, in a different classification than Langeliers’ school, played after Keller High, which meant Elder watched the game.
He remembers Langeliers catching eight innings before his team took the lead. In extras, Langeliers left the dugout for … the mound.
Yes, he went out to pitch. And Elder remembers Langeliers hitting 96-98 mph that day.
“I knew he had a good one,” Elder said of Langeliers’ arm.
Trey Harris, Braves outfield prospect
From right field, Trey Harris witnessed it all. His jaw dropped.
During a Double-A game early last season, Langeliers blocked a ball but couldn’t find it in the dirt. As he circled and tried to spot it, a base runner took off for second base. Out of nowhere, Langeliers found the ball, fired a strike and got the runner by two steps.
“(The runner) was already halfway there,” Harris said, his tone of voice indicating he remains amazed at this. “He just turned around and threw it, and it was money.”
From that point on, Harris’ reactions flipped: He would be more amazed when Langeliers didn’t throw someone out than when he did.
“When he didn’t throw people out,” Harris said, “I was always like, ‘Yeah, something must’ve happened. He must’ve hit somebody’s helmet or something.’”
What makes him so good: “It’s just the consistency that every throw is firm.” One example from Harris: Last season, Langeliers made one play in which he fielded a bunt like an infielder, went across his body and still made a crisp throw.
As the season progressed, Harris would yell something when the ball came out of Langeliers’ hand: “See ya later!”
Greg Walker, Braves roving minor-league hitting instructor
At one point during an interview, Greg Walker pointed to his hand. There’s a scar that looks like a line, and it’s where a surgeon once cut him open to remove his fractured hamate bone.
It’s the same procedure Langeliers underwent when he fractured his hamate bone months before the draft.
Around that time, the Braves had sent Walker to Texas to scout a few other players. Walker, who required a full offseason to recover from that hand procedure years ago when he played, didn’t think he would be able to see Langeliers on that trip.
Then he received a call.
Only a few weeks after surgery, Langeliers was back.
“Playing?” Walker said at the time. “You got to be (expletive) me.”
Before seeing Langeliers at Baylor, Walker had watched him play for Team USA. He came away impressed both times. “God, that looks like Karko,” he said to himself, an ode to his old teammate, catcher Ron Karkovice.
Did Langeliers blow away Walker with a specific throw?
“Any one of them,” Walker said.
Ben Sestanovich, Braves assistant GM for player development
Ben Sestanovich, whom the Braves hired months after drafting Langeliers, received his first in-person look at the catcher during spring training in 2020. Then he saw him again at the alternate site following the minor-league shutdown.
“Certainly, it’s like the first time you see him throw,” Sestanovich said when asked about the first time he was blown away by Langeliers’ cannon.
He then added: “It was pretty evident on a regular basis. Now, we didn’t really have real games, so you didn’t see it kind of in action. I think it took a while really for me to see how it played in a game until last year, and some of the throws he can make are really pretty impressive.”
Jared Shuster, Braves left-handed pitching prospect
Jared Shuster, Langeliers’ Double-A teammate last year, can remember one of the first times the catcher threw out a base runner while he was on the mound.
“Felt the ball whizz by me,” Shuster recalled. “It was hard. He’s got a cannon.”
