Early in Orioles manager Brandon Hyde’s tenure with the team, he used spring training as an opportunity to share his hopes for those early-years rebuilding clubs.

Chief among them was he wanted the team to be aggressive on the bases. Hearing Adam Jones, the newly minted adviser to general manager Mike Elias, note that this group was more athletic than the “big hairy guys” trying to hit home runs he shared a clubhouse with throughout the 2010s, it struck me that they didn’t take advantage of that athleticism and speed the same way they had in past years as the offense stagnated in the second half of 2024.

According to MLB’s baserunning metrics from Statcast via baseballsavant.com, the Orioles went from being one of the best teams in terms of adding value on the bases in 2023 to league average in 2024. The 2023 club ranked second in baseball with 14 baserunning runs added, behind only the Cincinnati Reds, and fell to 14th with just one baserunning run added in 2024.

The raw numbers suggest the Orioles remained one of the fastest teams in the league but for a number of reasons didn’t take advantage of that quite so much.

One of them was down to personnel. For most of the first half of the year, one of their fastest regulars, Cedric Mullins, was in an offensive funk that kept him from getting on base often. Jorge Mateo, who with a spring speed of 29.9 feet per second is one of the game’s quickest baserunners, didn’t play after July 23 after dislocating his elbow.

Yet those are the players who are most associated with steals, and the Orioles’ value add on the bases in 2023 came in the form of taking extra bases, not stealing them. The 2023 club created 38 runs by advancing an extra base when it was presented, according to Statcast data, with seven runs lost when they were thrown out and 16 on occasions when they held their runners. They gained fewer runs by advancing (29) in 2024 and also lost more by not running (20), which in the measure of the latter made them one of the most conservative baserunning teams.

That’s an obvious area of upside for the Orioles, who, with a full complement of hitters available in a way they didn’t have in the second half of last year plus more lineup flexibility, can use their roster depth and speed to keep opponents under pressure.

It’s curious, though, that stolen bases aren’t a larger part of their repertoire. There’s a common school of thought not to create outs on the bases when run producers are up, and that would reduce the probability of the Orioles running anytime Adley Rutschman, Anthony Santander, Ryan Mountcastle or Ryan O’Hearn was up last year, to name a few.

If the Orioles want to run more this year, replacing Santander with some combination of Tyler O’Neill and Heston Kjerstad would give them a little more overall speed, as would more playing time for Jackson Holliday, as he had down the stretch. And let’s be clear — there’s room for them to run more.

The Orioles’ 107 stolen base attempts last year ranked 19th in the league, down from 124 attempts (13th in the league) in 2023. Even allowing for personnel differences and Mateo’s absence, that they lag teams that are similarly young and athletic (the 2024 Nationals and 2023 Reds), as well as smart and analytically inclined (the Rays and Brewers) suggests the ingredients are there for the Orioles to run more than they do.

It feels like we may be past the days of stolen bases being considered too risky or free outs, given changes to how often a pitcher can step off to hold a runner and the institution of the pitch clock. The more a team runs, within reason, the more it probably can capture the benefits of that aggression at a rate that would mitigate that risk.

And as we look at the ways the Orioles can improve their offense, knowing that an overhaul in philosophy and instruction is off the table, this is one. It’s unlikely that a team that was among the league’s best in hitting with runners in scoring position in 2023 and saw a steep regression as last year progressed doesn’t enjoy a reversion to at least the mean in that category this year. Taking the opportunity to create more chances with runners in scoring position would not only give them more chances to push runs across, but the threat of running more often when the Orioles are on base would put pressure on pitchers and generate the mistakes that their hitters are trained to punish.

So I’d expect again, as we start hearing from Hyde and the Orioles leading up to and into spring training, that this might be a facet of their offense they’re looking to enhance. It might be a familiar song to hear a team say it wants to run more before the season begins. The Orioles have a lot of opportunity to follow through on it.