SARASOTA, Fla. — When describing his offensive strategy, new Orioles hitting coach Cody Asche kept it simple. It starts with the main objective of baseball: score the most runs possible. From there, though, Asche expands his mission to a focus on three key attributes.

Hit the ball hard.

Aim for line drive swings.

Control the strike zone.

If Baltimore does those three things, Asche said, the offense should be productive. But it’s not a wholesale change of any kind from what Asche preached in years past as part of a hitting staff that featured Matt Borgschulte and Ryan Fuller, too.

Borgschulte departed for the Minnesota Twins and Fuller joined the Chicago White Sox this offseason after the Orioles saw a second-half decline in production. Asche, who served as the offensive strategy coach from 2023-24, moved into the lead hitting coach role, while Tommy Joseph and Sherman Johnson joined the major league staff.

Overall, the philosophy remains consistent. There was criticism of the hitting staff from the fan base last season due to a perception that the Orioles were too reliant on the home run, but Asche maintains many of the same principles while stating that the instruction never wavered from them.

“I know at times that might look like we’re only trying to hit home runs, we’re trying to launch the ball,” Asche said. “But I think, if you asked a lot of our guys, I think a strength of mine is seeing the game from the players’ perspective and understanding that simple wins a lot, and I think our players resonate with simple messaging. A lot of times, it’s: ‘Get a good pitch, hit a line drive.’ Let’s not overcomplicate things.

“I think our guys really take to that. Whether it looks like that or not, that’s for everybody else to decide,” Asche continued. “But fans at home, I promise you, we’re preaching sound baseball philosophy and things that have worked in this game for 200 years, from Ted Williams to Pete Rose to Tony Gwynn. We’re all trying to get a good pitch. We’re all trying to hit line drives.”

When analyzing the Orioles’ offensive output in 2024, there’s plenty to like on the whole. They finished fourth in total runs scored and fourth in on-base-plus-slugging percentage (.751). They were third in hard-hit rate (42.2%) and third in slugging percentage (.435).

But breaking it down further showed there was room to improve on some of Asche’s main principles. Baltimore’s hitters ranked 25th in the majors with a 19% line drive rate, while ranking third in fly ball percentage (40.5%). They finished 16th in the majors in walks, and they swung at pitches outside the strike zone 29.4% of the time (11th most).

“We want to hit balls hard. We want to hit a lot of line drives. We want to control the zone,” Asche said. “We want to make pitchers pay when they don’t pitch to us. A lot of those things kind of come together in OPS and run scoring. For me, the goal is always going to be the goal: to score the most runs in the major leagues. We almost did it last year. You start from there, you work backwards, you see where guys can fit in, where they can get better, but you know, a big part of that is, we want to control the zone. We want to do that a little bit better.”

Some of the decline was most apparent after the All-Star break, and it was evident through the Orioles’ 33-33 record following the Midsummer Classic.

After July 15, their slugging percentage dropped to .412 (10th) and their OPS dipped slightly to .731 (11th). Although they walked more, their batting average of .246 was tied for 14th. Some of that decline was felt most prominently through the regressions of star players such as catcher Adley Rutschman.

But Asche is confident Rutschman’s decline was the “exception, not the rule” and that he and others will rebound or improve. And, although it might look like the Orioles are homer-happy, that’s really a byproduct of productive swing decisions.

“We’re shaping swings that, when the ball is in the middle of the plate, we hit those balls hard,” Asche said. “And, when we hit those balls hard, they go at productive angles. And those productive angles are line drives. We are very fortunate here that a lot of our hitters have huge ceilings, that their line drives go over the wall quite a bit.”