{"id":705472,"date":"2026-05-22T05:21:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/705472\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T05:21:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T05:21:48","slug":"the-orioles-still-believe-in-their-hitting-philosophy-more-than-this-season-depends-on-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/705472\/","title":{"rendered":"The Orioles still believe in their hitting philosophy. More than this season depends on it."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been nearly two years and three sets of hitting coaches since the Orioles\u2019 offensive philosophy first came into question. The answers, by and large, have always been the same. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s because it hasn\u2019t changed much. The core principles \u2014 controlling the strike zone and attacking pitches that the batter can hit hard in the air \u2014 were installed at the beginning of this decade to help bring the rebuilding club back to relevance.<\/p>\n

To say it worked doesn\u2019t mean much now, because it\u2019s been a while since it has. MASN analyst Ben McDonald\u2019s take on the matter after Wednesday\u2019s game only brought more attention to it. The offense isn\u2019t the only thing you can say that about when it comes to these Orioles, but nowhere do the short-term failures and long-term frustrations align more closely than in the batter\u2019s box. <\/p>\n

It seems like the only ones who can separate the two are pulling the strings for the Orioles. They believe in what they do for a reason \u2014 it\u2019s backed by data and, honestly, common sense. Hitting the ball hard is better than hitting it softly, and swinging at bad pitches is as sure a way to generate an out as any. <\/p>\n

But all that is trite when it\u2019s not working. The club\u2019s faith in what it does is so deeply held by those running the organization that any meaningful change in application would be an admission of failure that, at a time of such scrutiny, would only lend credence to the criticisms the Orioles\u2019 front office is facing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to see why the Orioles persist down the path they\u2019re on. It would be helpful if it started to work again.<\/p>\n

Manager Craig Albernaz\u2019s chuckle when the topic came up while speaking to reporters Saturday was the latest sign of the Orioles\u2019 resolve to persist on this offensive path. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just laughing because it\u2019s the assumption that, if you just poke the ball in play, it\u2019s going to be a hit,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we all know in this game, especially at this level, when you hit the ball soft it\u2019s probably not going to be a hit with how elite these athletes are on the field. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s very few things you can control in the batter\u2019s box. Are you on time? Did you get a good pitch to hit? And did you get your swing off that you wanted to get off? Once the ball leaves your bat, you have no say of what happens, and our guys did a great job [Friday] of getting good pitches to hit and put their swing on it and nothing to show for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was speaking about their loss Friday, but that\u2019s mostly been true all year. They entered Wednesday fifth in baseball with a 35.1% hard-hit rate and 17th in runs with 212. Specifically on hard-hit balls, their batting average (.465) and batting average on balls in play (.398) were 17th in baseball, and they were slugging .914, which was 15th. Part of that is because they were 14th in baseball in terms of how often those hard-hit balls went in the air at 62.3%. <\/p>\n

\"\"Catcher Adley Rutschman is batting .266 with an .827 OPS. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

But this is all a bit beside the point, because it\u2019s the swing-and-miss that seems like a byproduct of them trying to hit the ball this hard this often that is coming under scrutiny. Entering Wednesday, their 24.8% strikeout rate was third highest in baseball. They were in the top third of the league in chase rate (29.9%), and digging deeper it seems their takes are more to blame for their strikeouts than their whiffs. As a club, 28.7% of pitches they faced were called strikes or whiffs \u2014 17.6% in the former category and 11.2% in the latter.<\/p>\n

If the results were better, that would all be noise. Instead, the only noise is the questions about what they will do about it. For a lot of reasons, the answer is they\u2019ll likely stay the course.<\/p>\n

The hitting program has its roots in the pandemic. Matt Blood was hired in September 2019 to lead the farm system and, with a pitching program already under construction, he set out to build a hitting group to help shepherd a promising group taken that year to the majors. <\/p>\n

In 2020, newly hired affiliate hitting coaches Anthony Villa and Ryan Fuller used spring training and then the pandemic to develop a program built around the core philosophies that positive swing decisions and consistent elevated hard contact are the path to sustained success. <\/p>\n

The philosophy hasn\u2019t changed much, even if the voices have. Fuller and Matt Borgschulte were co-hitting coaches from 2022-24, and there was little to quibble with regarding the organization\u2019s offensive philosophy until the Orioles stopped scoring in the second half of 2024. Those two left the organization that year, and the team elevated Cody Asche from hitting strategy coach to hitting coach, brought minor league hitting coordinator Sherman Johnson up as an assistant hitting coach and added Tommy Joseph to that same role. <\/p>\n

That group lasted one year before moving on in the team\u2019s coaching turnover this fall, and in their place came outsiders in Dustin Lind and Brady North. Lind, the hitting coach, was hired from the Phillies but has a long relationship with Villa, who worked with him as a player and was a sounding board as the Orioles\u2019 program was being built in 2020. <\/p>\n

Villa is now the team\u2019s director of player development. North came from the Rays. Blood is currently the vice president of player and staff development and had a major role in helping Albernaz build his staff.<\/p>\n

\"\"Catcher Samuel Basallo has a .277 batting average and .832 OPS. (Ulysses Mu\u00f1oz\/The Banner)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been more focus of late on situational hitting up and down the system, but there\u2019s a reason the Orioles\u2019 offensive philosophy has been static. They draft hitters they believe have the skills to implement it, and they have been honing those skills a specific way for this entire decade. <\/p>\n

It goes without saying that some of those players are applying the plan better than others. There are plenty of layers to it, but that doesn\u2019t make the on-field aspect any different from the bigger-picture issue. <\/p>\n

The players have only ever been asked to do one thing from the moment they join this organization. The requestors have only ever believed that this is the way to win. President of baseball operations Mike Elias said this team was built around offense. That offense was built a specific way, on purpose, starting with his first draft eight years ago next month. <\/p>\n

It worked. It probably will again, whether here or somewhere else. It\u2019s just not working now. And, considering all the opportunities they\u2019ve had to change before, there\u2019s no expecting they will now. That just means the results better change \u2014 and fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been nearly two years and three sets of hitting coaches since the Orioles\u2019 offensive philosophy first came…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[143,39604,47,2538,5,1404,4,12212,23849,125],"class_list":["post-705472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-city","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimoreorioles","tag-baseball","tag-camden-yards","tag-mlb","tag-os","tag-opacy","tag-orioles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116616557593541966","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}