What’s the Orioles’ secret to developing great hitters? Rival teams have theories

The Baltimore Orioles are a lesson in successful rebuilding, going from 115 losses in 2018 to one of the best teams in baseball — with one of the best farm systems — in five years. The O’s won the American League East last year with 101 wins. Their farm system has produced young All-Stars Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg, with the next wave — Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo — recently advancing to the major leagues. Several current rebuilding organizations have cited Baltimore as their blueprint, particularly in producing young hitters.

The problem is identifying what that blueprint is. The Orioles keep their secret sauce quiet—there are plenty of theories—though some of their guiding principles aren’t necessarily groundbreaking. They’re just hard to execute, like the 65 new signings the Mike Elias regime made in about 18 months, as the organization streamlined coaching messaging in the minor leagues and prioritized tough work environments to create more competition through a wholesale culture overhaul.

“We have a set of organizational non-negotiable philosophies or values, and what we had to do was find and hire a group of people who believed in them or were willing to push them and build on them, and that’s what we initially did,” said Matt Blood, who was promoted from director of player development to vice president of player development and interior scouting this winter. “We drafted players who fit those moments as well. So we recruited players with those skills and we found coaches and built resources to reinforce those skills and then put them to work.”

Gunnar Henderson was one of four Orioles batters to make the All-Star team. (Nick Cammett/Getty Images)

While anecdotal evidence suggests that many of the Orioles’ young hitters are good at the same things, Blood disagrees.

“I think they’re all just good at adapting,” he said, “and being able to compete with whatever the game throws at them.”

Still, there are some interesting theories around the league as other teams try to figure out what the Orioles are doing right so they can follow suit.

“They’re drafting for VBA,” a rival scout said of the Orioles.

That’s a compelling idea. The Orioles have found an alphabet soup that’s better than the analytics other teams use, and they’ve used it to find the best hitters in baseball.

What is VBA?

Vertical Bat Angle is the angle of the bat relative to the ground, judged directly behind or in front of the batter. A “steeper” bat angle is generally associated with the potential to lift the ball better, although it may have some consequences when it comes to swing-and-miss in parts of the zone. In other words, it’s great to be steep low in the zone, but it’s hard to maintain that steepness and still hit a ball at the top of the zone.

This visualization of vertical bat angle comes from an explanatory article by Eric Cressey. (Photo illustration courtesy of Eric Cressey)

Are the Orioles any good at this? Do they have good swing paths? Yes and no.

At the highest level, @SwingGraphs The Orioles are somewhere in the middle when it comes to VBA. But the major-league team still has some holdovers from previous regimes, as well as players who fill different roles for their current lineup. In the minor leagues, @SwingGraphs found that Baltimore’s top three prospects — Holliday, Mayo and Heston Kjerstad — were second-best in the league compared to other top position players in terms of their “path score,” which encompasses VBA. Another team’s analyst pointed out that the Orioles’ minor leaguers have the second-highest launch angle in the sport, which would be consistent with good VBA.

Still, it’s probably not a unique approach to pursue a single number in the scouting and development circles. Evidence of this is how well the Orioles are at hitting pitches in both the upper and lower thirds of the strike zone.

The Orioles are the only team in baseball that ranks in the top five in slugging in both the upper and lower thirds of the zone, though the Minnesota Twins offense is close. You can also see that the Orioles don’t have all that many misses in the upper third of the zone — the Red Sox have a good slugging percentage in the upper third, but miss far more there. The Orioles also have the third-smallest differential between top slugging and bottom slugging. They’re good everywhere!

So they don’t necessarily draft for VBA or value it specifically, as multiple sources confirmed. Adaptability? That’s another story. We just saw that their offense is multi-dimensional. Executives from other teams had more theories about how the Orioles have developed bats that can hit anywhere in the zone.

“They’re drafting guys with current power and improving their launch angle and swing decisions,” said a rival assistant general manager with player development responsibilities. “That current power is in the form of top-end exit velocity, not necessarily slugging percentage. They’re teaching better Vertical Bat Angle to lower ground-ball rates. Swing decisions plus better VBA equals power production when those top-end exit velocity exist.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. Take raw power, add swing decision, and improve their bat paths, and you start pumping up some really good hitters? And how do they add all that? How do they improve their raw, young hitters?

“They have a lot of young coaches and they throw short box with them — so those are relatively active arms, close in, and the hitters have to adjust and get the ball out of a release point,” said a rival director of player development. “They use weighted bats at most levels as part of the regular process to keep bat speed up. They focus on making good swing decisions and helping hitters internalize that as they come through the minors.”

This is starting to match things even the Orioles will admit to appreciating.

“Our training environments are very competitive, very difficult,” Blood said. “That leads to more efficiency, in terms of learning skills.”

They want to make practice difficult and fun for their hitters, and the short box is the solution. In fact, those are young coaches challenged each other to develop the best things for their short boxing sessions, where they translate their knowledge of the shape of the field into meanness on the mound. They want their hitters to only hit pitches they can hit, so the nightly swing decision texts help emphasize that point. They believe in data-driven techniques that have been proven to produce results on the field, so the weighted baton training makes sense. They also use force plates — devices that measure how much force a player puts into the ground, which Driveline Baseball says has a lot to do with bat speed — to monitor their batters and guide practices throughout the season.

These examples alone give us a glimpse into the data- and technology-driven process of developing the current Oriole slugger. But these are not concepts that are foreign to other organizations. So why is it working so particularly well for the Orioles? The conversation often comes back to the players themselves.

“I think the Orioles have done a fantastic job of getting guys with really good makeup,” Adley Rutschman said Travis Sawchick told The Score. “And once you get enough guys that are on the same mindset, because everybody’s pushing each other and everybody’s on the same page, it would be really hard if guys weren’t convinced. When guys are convinced, it’s really fun.”

“Every All-Star has a high baseball IQ,” a rival hitting coach agreed. “Everybody has a specific way to succeed that night. The high IQ allows them to know what the pitcher is trying to do to them that day and adjust their swing path and approach on a pitcher-to-pitcher level. He’s throwing sinkers, I’m going to be more scoopy with my swing today! He’s got a lot of ride, I’m going to be flatter today.

“It has never been more important to have such high IQ players.”

(Top photo of Jackson Holliday: Cole Burston/Getty Images)