Orioles hitting coach Cody Asche on early-season struggles, Rutschman, hitting against lefties

ANAHEIM, California—After last season, two of the Orioles’ hitting coaches, Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte, left the team and Cody Asche was promoted to lead hitting coach.

It’s been a difficult season for Asche, whose hitters have struggled to hit with runners in scoring position, against left-handers and in general. On Sunday, they defeated a left-handed starter and scored on a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly in a 7-3 win over the Angels. Before the game, Asche offered his thoughts on the early-season failures in a group interview. Here are excerpts:

Asche on the Orioles’ hitting struggles:

“It’s my job to show up for these guys every day, make sure that they’re prepared to go play the game, make sure their minds are right, [and] physically they’re right. That’s kind of the approach I’ve taken with the job this year, something I lean on from my past experiences as a player and understanding that there are going to be ups and downs.

“Unfortunately, the start of the season had been more down than up. There’s no hiding behind that. The beauty of baseball is it’s a long season, and those who are strong-minded and strong-willed continue to show up, day after day, make minor adjustments and keep building off strong successes. Those are the guys that come out on top. That’s the message I try to preach to our players. You’re not going to fix everything today. You’re not going to get four hits in an at-bat. You can’t score 10 runs with one swing.”

Inability to hit left-handers:

“If there was one big thing I would give you a great answer. I’m optimistic about the future of our offense against left-handed pitching. [Ryan Mountcastle] has gotten going, he’s a big part of that. Ramón [Laureano} has gotten going, he’s a big part of that. We’ve got [Tyler O’Neill] back in the lineup, Gunnar [Henderson] is swinging the bat well. When he’s swinging the bat well, I don’t think the matchups really affect us that much. [Jackson Holliday] has been giving us really good at-bats. I think as the lineup is right now, with some guys starting to pick it up, it’s a little bit more balanced up and down the lineup. So, I’m optimistic that what has happened up to this point in the season won’t continue. From a hitting coach perspective, we’ve got to be better. We’ve got to prepare them better, we’ve got to train them better to give them a better chance at success.”

Adley Rutschman’s decline at the plate:

“It’s a difficult position to be in as a hitting coach because you can look at the underlying stuff and you see that it should be better. But at the end of the day, results are results, and the scoreboard tells a different story.

“The beautiful thing about Rutsch is I think he understands that very well, and he understands that more than you expect a player to. The great thing about being Adley Rutschman’s hitting coach is that he shows up every single day with a mindset of, ‘hey, I’m going to get this right, what do I need to do today?’

“He shows up for his teammates, he shows up for this team, he shows up for this org in more ways than one. We’re working through it with minor adjustments daily. That’s the beautiful thing about him and that’s why he’s had so much success in his life and in this game.”

Failure to hit when the team is behind:

“We need to get on base more. We’re getting into three-ball counts. We’re giving walks away. We’re getting deep into counts and we’re not putting competitive balls in play. We’re not stringing together those types of at-bats as much as we need to. Ultimately, that’s my responsibility to make sure that we do. So, yeah, it pains me. It keeps me up at night, but at the end of the day, that’s a basis of our messaging. Guys know we’re in control of the strike zone. Guys know the importance of three-ball counts. Guys know that when we chase in those counts, we’re giving away free on base. When we’re doing that, we’re not going to get runners in scoring position. We’re not going to string together at-bats. We’re not going to make life tough on the pitcher. This is messaging we hear quite often. Again, at the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to make sure that changes.”

Young players dealing with adversity:

“You don’t like to always just build in the easy excuse as the coach that, ‘Hey, they’re young and they’re inexperienced.’ But, yeah, there’s going to be some inconsistencies to it until you get three, four or five years of at-bats under your belt and you’re really comfortable with where you’re at or there’s not really the threat of getting optioned or someone taking your job. There’s a lot of things that play into it that go deeper than just inexperience. We have a group of guys that are really, really talented. I don’t think they’re thinking about that. I don’t think their mind’s on that.

“You’ve just got to keep helping them learn from the failure, and I think that’s a strength of what we’ve done in our hitting development with the Orioles is the postgame feedback loops, the postgame breakdowns of what happened, the post-at-bat breakdowns of what’s happening, so that when they do fail, that happens less often in the future because they’re learning from their mistakes and our guys are really good at that. They’re really, really good at that.”

Call for questions: I answer Orioles questions most weekdays. Please send yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com.