These guys could shine with a slight change in approach

We know that the Orioles’ coaching staff will look a bit different in 2025 than it did this year. The O’s have decided to move on from a number of major league coaches, including two co-hitting coaches in Matt Borgschulte and Ryan Fuller.

While the coaching staff isn’t entirely to blame for the Orioles’ struggles in the second half of 2024, a change of pace might be a good thing for a number of guys on the roster.

The Orioles have a young lineup, and not everyone has been successful at the major league level.

With a little help and a slightly different approach from a new team of coaches, these three Orioles hitters could be on the way to unlocking the next level of performance and help Baltimore make the postseason for the third consecutive season.

After a rough debut, Jackson Holliday could use a boost

Jackson Holliday’s debut was supposed to be historic. Having been ranked as the consensus top prospect in baseball, everyone expected Holliday to come out of the gates like a man on fire. Unfortunately, things didn’t go so well for him.

Holliday hit just .059/.111/.059 in his first taste of the majors and was summarily demoted in order to get back on track. However, Holliday wasn’t that much better in his return after the All Star break. He hit .218/.285/.365 in the second half and rode the pine for both postseason games in October.

Holliday had been working on a slight swing change toward the end of this year, and the results were promising. He’d started to eliminate the leg kick in favor of a small toe tap to help his timing. It worked in a small sample over the season’s final week.

Whether the new coaching staff is able to continue to tweak the approach to turn Holliday into the star we’re all expecting him to be remains to be seen.

Adley Rutschman needs to hit the restart button after a dismal second half

On June 27, Adley Rutschman took a ball off the hand behind the plate. He was visibly shaken up for a second but remained in the game and things seemed fine. However, from that point forward, Rutschman hit .189/.279/.280 with just 4 homers and 9 doubles in 71 games.

It’s possible that Rutschman was compensating for an undisclosed injury. It’s also possible that he just fell apart, and that he was never injured at all. As Jon Meoli wrote, we’ll never know for sure.

What we do know is that Rutschman needs to reset during the offseason. He was a very good hitter between 2022 and 2023, and was out to a hot start in the first half of 2024. That second half was long, though. He’ll need to find a way to clean the slate heading into 2025 and working with a new coaching staff could be the catalyst Rutschman needs to get back to All Star form.

Heston Kjerstad could become a star with a few tweaks to his approach

There were moments in 2024 where it looked like Kjerstad was on track to become a star. However, a concussion kept him out for an extended period in the second half. All told, Kjerstad’s .253/.351/.394 line looks good but there are clear areas where the young lefty could improve.

In particular, Kjerstad needs a change in approach. He struck out nearly 29% of the time in 2024, and that’s while playing primarily in a platoon role. His marks in the minors suggest he can be a bit more patient – he struck out just 15% of the time at Double-A in 2022 and ran a 20.5% K rate at Triple-A Norfolk last year.

If the new coaching staff can help Kjerstad find a better approach, particularly in regard to breaking balls, it could be a huge improvement. Kjerstad is weak against sliders and curves, so finding a way to read and lay off pitches he knows he struggles against could do wonders for hit future performance.