New Orioles’ hitting coaches bring major league experience

SARASOTA—After the Orioles’ offense slumped in the second half of last season and the team was held to just a single run in the two games of the Wild Card Series, it wasn’t surprising that the Orioles decided on new hitting coaches.

Last year’s co-hitting coaches, Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte, who were in place for three seasons, are elsewhere. Fuller is the lead hitting coach of the Chicago White Sox, and Borgschulte is the hitting coach for the Minnesota Twins.

Cody Asche, the Orioles’ offensive strategist in 2023 and 2024, is the lead hitting coach. He’s joined by Tommy Joseph, who was the Seattle Mariners’ assistant hitting coach last season, and Sherman Johnson, who was the Orioles’ upper-level hitting coach last year.

Unlike Borgschulte, who never played professionally and Fuller, whose experience was limited to 32 games in the Arizona Diamondbacks’ organization in 2012, the three Orioles’ hitting coaches all played in the major leagues.

Asche, who’s 34, played five seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox. The 33-year-old Joseph, who was Asche’s teammate with the Phillies, hit 43 home runs in 2016 and 2017. Johnson, another 34-year-old was hitless in 10 at-bats with the Los Angeles Angels in 2018.

Many major league hitting coaches have played at the highest level.

“It can help. I don’t think you need to have it,” Joseph said. “You sat where they sit. You’ve been in the box against the best in the game and doing what they’re doing currently. You have a unique perspective that hopefully gets a little respect.”

Joseph tried hard to impress Charlie Manuel, who managed the Phillies when he was a young player in their organization.

“The one thing Charlie always loved was home runs,” Joseph said. “We always knew where we stood. If you weren’t hitting homers, you weren’t on Charlie’s good side.”

Johnson didn’t have success at the major league level, but he can say he played.

“I don’t think it can hurt,” he said. “I don’t think it’s mandatory to have big league time. I only have a little bit. I can definitely tell them a lot of stories about what I did wrong, what it felt like and just understand what they’re going through sometimes.”

Asche has the most big league time of the three, and extensive experience with the successes and struggles of the team.  

“I have a lot of players here I care deeply about,” he said. “I have a lot of players here that excite me to coach on a daily basis and keep me enthusiastic on a daily basis. At this stage of my life, this is what I’m looking for, something that’s meaningful and I have a lot of passion for. The players make it really easy.”

Asche doesn’t believe the team’s offensive approach needs a huge change, even though the Orioles hit .251 with runners in scoring position a year after they led the major leagues with a .287 average.

“You look at our team and our offensive season last year was full of a lot of success,” Asche said. “There were parts of the year where they weren’t as successful. The benefit of the Orioles is we’re just never satisfied from the top down. We’re always looking for room to grow. That’s why we’re good, and that’s why we’ve been in this upward trajectory for the better part of six, seven years, starting when [executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias] took over here.”

Manager Brandon Hyde has said he wants Colton Cowser and Jackson Holliday to bunt for hits more often and steal bases, but Asche said the overall approach will stay the same.

“We want to hit balls hard,” he said “We want to hit a lot of line drives. We want to control the zone. We want to make pitchers pay when they don’t pitch to us. A lot of those things come together in OPS, run scoring.

“We want to control the zone. We want to do that a little bit better. I think we have players in the big leagues who are ready to take the next step in doing that. You see it in the playoffs, the Yankees and Dodgers, they control the zone really well. They hit a lot of balls hard. They slug. We slug. There’s probably some room for improvement in that aspect.”

After a horrible second half of 2024, when he batted .207 with three home runs and 20 RBIs, catcher Adley Rutschman looks reenergized this spring. He’s 8-for-18 (.444) with a home run and three RBIs.

“Hitting’s delicate. It’s really delicate. The snowball starts rolling downhill, and you’re catching one of the best staffs in baseball,” Asche said. “The catcher has a lot of weight on their shoulders and when one part of your game is not where you like it to be, things start competing in your head. You’re just fighting things and looking for things and searching for things. I think it was just a good learning process for Adley of how to control a lot of things that come with being a superstar and being an anchor of a team. I think it was good for Rutsch to just reset. He showed up at spring training in a really good mindset.

“I don’t think it’s a big mechanical thing. I don’t think it’s a big mental thing. It’s tough. Baseball’s tough. You find yourself in a place you don’t want to be in in the middle of the season in July. Now, you’re battling fatigue. You’re battling schedules. You’re battling a lot of things … If you’re a fan watching Adley Rutschman, I would say last year is the exception, not the rule to what his career is going to look like. If he goes through struggles again, I think he’ll be better equipped to stop that snowball,”

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