Ryan Fuller, the Orioles’ co-hitting coach, was talking to me in spring training about the next steps required for the team’s hitting program to deliver the championship-level success the club is aiming for. But his mind went back to the origins, and the words he used stuck with me.

He was talking about his initial meetings, nearly five years ago, with assistant general manager Sig Mejdal and then-farm director Matt Blood about the key concepts of “what we believe a great offense looks like,” he said.

They should sound familiar by now: “Great swing decisions, hard contact and hitting balls to do damage,” Fuller said then.

It should be no surprise that those principles still drive everything the Orioles do. Nor should it be surprising that, when they execute them, it works out.

Even as the Orioles were scuffling down the stretch, this was largely the case. Yes, they needed to hit better situationally — as so many fans pointed out — but the Orioles strictly believe in their key concepts, whether or not runners are in scoring position.

If they’re going to make noise in the next few weeks, it will be because they continue to adhere to their way of hitting. And that starts with hitting the ball hard.

As a team, the Orioles entered Sunday second in the majors behind the Atlanta Braves with a 42.4% hard-hit rate; league average is 38.9%, so we can probably reasonably say that 40% for a game is a good indicator of success.

The Orioles had 98 games entering Sunday with a hard-hit rate (quantified as batted balls over 95 mph) over 40% and, in them, scored an average of 5.95 runs. As you’d imagine, that was often good enough to win; they went 61-37 (.622 winning percentage) when they hit the ball hard that often. When it was below 40%, they scored 3.83 runs per game and went 29-34.

When the hard-hit rate climbed to 50% or higher, the results were even better. Entering Sunday, they did so in 42 games — a little more than a quarter of their contests this season — and scored an average of 6.29 runs with a 28-14 record.

Conversely, they were 5-33 when they scored two runs or fewer, and in those 38 total games where the offense was quiet, their hard-hit rate was below 40% in 23 of them.

In August and September, when the offense came under a good bit of scrutiny, they were 13-12 with 4.63 runs per game when their hard-hit rate was over 40% and 12-13 with 4.08 runs per game when they were below that mark.

Everything in baseball comes down to timing and circumstance, minutely so when we’re talking reacting within milliseconds to hit a round ball with a round bat but also more broadly regarding how events are sequenced. Striking out with runners in scoring position is detrimental all the time, but hitting the ball hard consistently has been a recipe for success for these Orioles this year.

So, to a lesser extent, has their swing-decision emphasis. That has two components — chase rate and meatball swings. It’s not only about letting bad pitches pass but swinging at ones over the plate that they can hit hard in the air.

When it comes to laying off strikes, the Orioles are living somewhat tenuously in a world where aggression has paid off. The league-average chase rate was 28.5%; the Orioles were at 29.3%. If we use 28% as a cutoff for better than average, the Orioles had 71 games at or better than that and scored 4.56 runs per game when they were at their discerning best, going 39-32 in those games. When they chased above 30%, they went 37-33 and scored 4.86 runs per game.

Similarly, they were 49-35 and averaged 5.22 runs per game in the 84 games when they swung at the league-average of 73.5% or more of pitches in the heart of the plate, and 4.43 runs per game in the 77 games below that, going 41-36.

That’s probably an uncomfortable balance for the front office and coaches, who want to see their players succeed first and foremost but will be wary of the team being too aggressive and losing its way. They believe you can be discerning and still do a lot of damage, and at their best many Orioles do, Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman among them.

Recent history has shown that the playoffs are fertile grounds for everything the Orioles do. The league-average hard-hit rates in the last three full seasons were 38.7%, 38.3% and 39.4%; in the playoffs, those jumped to 40.7%, 39% and 42.6%. Chase rates in the regular season were 27.7%, 29.2% and 28.6%, then jumped to 29.4%, 29.6%, 32.3% in the playoffs.

A lot of that comes down to talent; the best teams have the best hitters, and the best hitters consistently hit the ball hard. Likewise, the best pitchers get swings and misses and force hitters to expand the strike zone.

The Orioles are going to be in the mix with the best again once the playoffs begin. They’ll have the same hitters meetings with the same opposing pitcher scouting reports and planning as they do every game, and they’ll have the same strengths and weaknesses as they did all season. Their consistent hard contact is a true asset that, when they tap into it, more often than not allows them to score in bunches and win. The rest has left a bit to be desired overall but has plenty of evidence of working as well.

Like many things, the regular season was just a preamble to the real referendum on where exactly these post-rebuilding Orioles are. Thanks to a few weeks when their lineup was incomplete down the stretch, their offensive philosophy could be due for a reckoning if it doesn’t work this week.

If it does, we know what it will look like.