Nick Kurtz will start at first base for the American League in the All-Star Game on July 14 at Citizens Bank Park, and catcher Shea Langeliers will join him on the roster — the first career selections for both Athletics players, announced Saturday.
Per MLB.com, the starting assignment came to Kurtz after Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. declined to participate; Kurtz ranked highest at the position on the player ballot. The numbers make it hard to argue. The 23-year-old, second-year first baseman is hitting .277 with 20 home runs and 66 RBIs — second in the American League behind Yordan Alvarez’s 67 — and his 76 walks lead the majors, driving a .419 on-base percentage. Earlier this season he reached base in 48 consecutive games, tying Mark McGwire’s franchise record, per MLB.com, and he was named AL Player of the Month in May.
Langeliers has quietly assembled a matching power line: .264 with 20 home runs and 44 RBIs in 80 games, an .822 OPS from the catcher position. That kind of production from behind the plate is rare enough that the selection needed no ballot-box help.
There is a homecoming thread to the Kurtz story, too. As NBC Sports Bay Area notes, he grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a die-hard Phillies fan whose family held season tickets — and now he will start an All-Star Game in the building where he watched his childhood team.
For a franchise still between homes and between eras, two first-time All-Stars anchoring the middle of the order and the position behind the plate are the clearest markers yet of what the next good A’s team is being built around. The roster around them remains a work in progress. The core, increasingly, does not look like one.
