Jon Meoli: The Orioles still believe in their hitting philosophy. More than just the season depends on it.

It’s been nearly two years and three sets of hitting coaches since the Orioles’ offensive philosophy first came into question. The answers, by and large, have always been the same.

That’s because it hasn’t changed much. The core principles — controlling the strike zone and attacking pitches that the batter can hit hard in the air — were installed at the beginning of this decade to help bring the rebuilding club back to relevance.

To say it worked doesn’t mean much now, because it’s been a while since it has. MASN analyst Ben McDonald’s take on the matter after Wednesday’s game only brought more attention to it. The offense isn’t 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’s box.

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 — it’s 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.

But all that is trite when it’s not working. The club’s 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’ front office is facing.

It’s easy to see why the Orioles persist down the path they’re on. It would be helpful if it started to work again.

Manager Craig Albernaz’s chuckle when the topic came up while speaking to reporters Saturday was the latest sign of the Orioles’ resolve to persist on this offensive path.

“I’m just laughing because it’s the assumption that, if you just poke the ball in play, it’s going to be a hit,” he said. “I think we all know in this game, especially at this level, when you hit the ball soft it’s probably not going to be a hit with how elite these athletes are on the field.

“There’s very few things you can control in the batter’s 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.”

He was speaking about their loss Friday, but that’s 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%.

But this is all a bit beside the point, because it’s 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 — 17.6% in the former category and 11.2% in the latter.

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’ll likely stay the course.

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.

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.

The philosophy hasn’t 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’s 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.

That group lasted one year before moving on in the team’s 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’ program was being built in 2020.

Villa is now the team’s 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.

There’s been more focus of late on situational hitting up and down the system, but there’s a reason the Orioles’ 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.

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’t make the on-field aspect any different from the bigger-picture issue.

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.

It worked. It probably will again, whether here or somewhere else. It’s just not working now. And, considering all the opportunities they’ve had to change before, there’s no expecting they will now. That just means the results better change — and fast.