More on the O's offense and the late-season falloff

When it comes to the Orioles offense, some of the judgements of it show recency bias, and that is understandable. As the team struggled late in the year the offensive performance and production dropped.

Fewer runs led to fewer wins, pretty easy to understand. In scoring just one run in two games in the playoffs, the offense that came up short often late in the year did so again, this time on the biggest stage.

For the full year, some of the O’s offensive numbers looked good. Those numbers include those from the first half, when the offense ranked second in team OPS and fourth in runs per game. But in the second half the offense ranked 11^th in the major leagues in team OPS and seventh in runs per game.

The first-half OPS was .764 as the Orioles scored 4.94 runs per game. In the second half those numbers were .731 and 4.73.

From Aug. 1 on, when the Orioles went 26-27, they scored 4.4 runs per game (13^th in runs) and the OPS was .702 (15^th).

Here are some O’s full-season rankings on some basic stats listing first the American League rank and then their ranking across the majors.

Batting average: .250 (3^rd/7^th)

OBP: .315 (4^th/11^th)

Slugging: .435 (1^st/3^rd)

OPS: 751 (2^nd/4^th)

Runs per game: 4.85 (2^nd/4^th)

Homers: 235 (2^nd/2^nd)

The O’s walk rate of 7.9 percent (8.3 was major league average) ranked 19^th in the majors. Their 22.0 strikeout rate (22.6 was major league average) ranked 18^th.

A huge season-to-season difference is seen in batting stats with runners in scoring position.

The team batting line this year with RISP was .251/.314/.428/.741. Among major league clubs those figures put the Orioles 17^th, 23^rd, ninth and 16^th.

The team posted much better numbers last year, when the team line with RISP was .287/.356/.481/.837 to rank first, second, first and first in the big leagues. The OPS in 2023 with RISP was nearly 100 points higher than it was this season.

In 2023 the team scored 807 runs, becoming the eighth O’s team all-time to score 800 or more. They got 786 this year. For much of the year they were on pace to score 800 again, but then the final weeks happened.

When it comes to those RISP chances – and the Orioles went 1-for-13 with RISP in the playoffs – general manager Mike Elias indicated in his post-playoff press conference that the club will look at many ways to improve both that specific stat and their overall run production.

“There is a lot of evidence that can be kind of difficult to control in a year-over-year, month-to-month basis,” Elias stated. “That said, I am going to behave as though it is under our control, and we are going to examine everything about our offensive approach, teachings, the mix of personnel ... and put ourselves in position to where we feel like we have addressed any potential shortcomings there.

“Because I don’t believe it’s necessarily all chance. I do think there are things that our organization, and ultimately our players, can do to improve our odds in that front.”

This could include less reliance on homers, more players with productive on-base percentage and the addition of players that can help in all those spots.

No doubt losing key players impacted the offense late in the year. But the O’s would be wrong to just assume better health fixes all, and they will not.

They have to figure out whether they can retain Anthony Santander via free agency and if some players will be tendered deals via arbitration.

Lots of decisions remain. 

All of this doesn’t have to be solved in a week, and it won’t be. The issue of improving the offense will be addressed and discussed and altered over months, not days or weeks.