Earlier in the season, when the Orioles’ bats were swinging at an all-time best, catcher James McCann interrupted an interview between a reporter and co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller. He stepped between the pair in the dugout and issued what he wholeheartedly believed.

“These are the best hitting coaches in the league,” McCann said. “I’m serious.”

He’s still serious. Over the last two months, as Baltimore’s batting numbers have tapered off and fans have begun to bemoan the players’ inconsistency, McCann is more bullish than ever in his belief. The Orioles’ hitting coaches — Fuller, Matt Borgschulte and Cody Asche — are among the best in the game.

It’s fair to stop and ask: How can that be? And many, many fans have. Fans on social media have been firing off takes that include calling for mass firings of a staff that has driven Baltimore’s success through extensive use of analytics, mechanical adjustments and curated approaches. This is despite the fact Baltimore is in first place in the American League East and was the first team to 80 wins, and that its overarching production includes being in fourth place in teamwide on-base-plus-slugging percentage, even after a poor two months.

There is no hiding from those months, of course. In July and August, Baltimore’s batting average dropped to .244 — from .255 from March to June, a span in which the Orioles led MLB with a .778 OPS. With it, the Orioles have performed at a .500 clip in recent months.

But, to hear it from the players, there are no fingers being pointed at the hitting coaches. They aren’t the ones in the box making swing decisions, or popping the ball up, or struggling with runners in scoring position.

At this level, especially, the onus is on the players.

“Listen to what the players say,” McCann said. “The players, I haven’t heard them say anything bad about our hitting guys. Everyone’s on the same page. The hardest thing for fans, in my opinion, is to understand it’s a marathon. And I get it. Fans, you love your team, you go to work from 9 to 5, and you can’t wait to watch your team play, and when they stink it up, it ruins your day. I get that.

“But at the same time, from our perspective as players, one game doesn’t dictate your season, doesn’t dictate that week. If you allow one game to dictate something more than just one game, it’s going to be a really long season.”

In this case, it has been more like two months — but a season is 162 games for a reason. The marathon aspect means the hottest team entering October tends to have the best chance of winning the World Series.

As September begins, the Orioles are banking on themselves to get healthy and heat up on offense. And they believe the advice from a trio of hitting coaches who have elevated their performances for so long will get them there.

“I think they’re really proactive and smart as a group and care about their job, and, man, if somebody’s complaining about the hitting coaches, that’s a misplaced frustration to be voiced on Twitter — not that I care what anyone says on Twitter, anyway,” Ryan O’Hearn said. “But I will ride and die with our hitting coaches any day, and no matter where my career takes me, I hopefully will be able to use them as a reference, because I think they’re really smart and really good.”

At this level, almost every player has learned from multiple hitting coaches. They have at-home coaches — Colton Cowser, for instance, talks with his longtime coach Sid Holland weekly, if not more frequently — and some have mentors from other teams. O’Hearn works with Dan Hennigan in the offseason, a Philadelphia-based hitting instructor who works in the Houston Astros’ organization. O’Hearn consults with John Mabry, his hitting coach from the Kansas City Royals who’s now with the Miami Marlins.

It’s always a collaborative effort, because hitting is one of the hardest things to do in any sport.

“It’s one of those things that you’re never going to figure it out,” O’Hearn said, “but leaning on hitting coaches, guys you can trust, is massive.”

And he trusts the Orioles’ coaches because they have played a role in resurrecting O’Hearn’s career. After he arrived in a trade before the start of the 2023 season, Baltimore’s hitting coaches worked with Hennigan to coordinate swing adjustments and approach changes they thought would be beneficial.

O’Hearn jumped onboard because of the track record Fuller, Borgschulte and Asche have. When Baltimore acquires a reclamation project, a buy-in from the player tends to lead to success. For instance, when former New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Hicks joined last season, Borgschulte had already studied Hicks’ swing dating back five years and described a way to alter his stride — and, by extension, improve Hicks’ timing.

“A lot of the technique that I used in my swing [in 2018] is what they’re trying to implement, or try to get me to get back to,” Hicks said last year. Hicks hit .275 with the Orioles compared to his .188 average in New York last season.

Outfielder Austin Slater, who arrived ahead of the trade deadline, credited the work the hitting coaches have done for him as the reason for his success. Since joining Baltimore, Slater is hitting .296 with an .836 OPS compared to his .185 average earlier in the season.

“A lot of it is just swing mechanics and just the mental game,” Slater said. “The hitting coaches we have here are unbelievable. A lot of credit goes to them, getting me back to where I think I should be as a player and as a hitter. At the beginning of the season, some of it was health related, and as the season kind of went on, you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole and maybe try too hard. And then you get traded a couple times and come here and get a staff that believes in you and also has a plan for you, [which] has felt really, really comforting and has helped a ton.”

O’Hearn, too, manufactured his turnaround upon working with his out-of-organization coaches and Fuller, Borgschulte and Asche.

He said what makes the Orioles coaches so good is that they’re proactive. Before O’Hearn approaches them searching for a fix, they already tend to be brainstorming solutions.

“Fuller is really good with mechanics. When I’m struggling, I want him to look at the iPad and tell me what he sees,” O’Hearn said. “Borgs and Asche are both also good at mechanics, but they’re also really good at game planning and how to attack each pitcher. They really, really care. They put in the time and effort. You can tell. It’s not like you go to them and say, ‘Hey, something’s wrong,’ and then they start working on it. They’re working for you without you even knowing. And then, when you come to them, they have something prepared for you.”

The communication among the trio is vital, McCann said. The veteran catcher, who recently reached 10 years of major league service time, has experienced a cultural divide in hitting mentality before in his career.

With another team, there was one old-school hitting coach and one analytically driven coach. The difference in mentalities, McCann said, was “divisive among the hitters.”

But, in Baltimore, “you go to the cage, you work with one of them, and before you even see the others, they know exactly what you worked on that day,” McCann said. “So their communication is great. They’re all on the same page.”

Still, there has been a noticeable regression over the last two months.

Hitting with runners in scoring position “hasn’t been a real strength of ours the second half,” manager Brandon Hyde said. The Orioles hit .233 with runners in scoring position during July and August, which ranked 25th in the majors.

“In those kinds of situations, you’ve gotta be able to force contact, to make contact and put pressure on the defense,” Hyde said. “Not expanding the strike zone and putting the ball in play, being really tough with two strikes, to shorten your swing a little bit and force some action.”

In 53 games in July and August, the Orioles left an average of 6.8 runners on base. They struck out 8.5 times and scored 4.5 runs per game. In 55 games from March to May, the offense scored five runs per game, struck out 8.1 times and stranded 6.4 runners on base — numbers that aren’t far off.

They went 39-16 from March to May, while July and August left them with a 25-28 record.

There’s not one factor alone but an amalgam of variables that has compounded, McCann said. Injuries decimated the pitching staff and lineup (infielders Ramón Urías, Ryan Mountcastle, Jorge Mateo and Jordan Westburg are out right now). The gauntlet nature of June, during which they played 29 games with just one day off, may have had a carryover effect into July.

“Then you start to get into late July and August, and those are the dog days of summer,” McCann said. “It happens all across the league. Guys get tired. They start to lose their legs a little bit at the plate. Mentally, you make mistakes because you’re tired. You may not be showing it running down the line, but deep down there’s lapses just because you are tired. Now that’s not an excuse, because every team deals with the same thing. But you’ve also got to remember you’ve got a group of young players who are still learning how to play a full major league season.

“So I don’t think there’s really one thing. We’ve faced some really good arms across that stretch, and the way the game works is, you face some really good arms and you’re not feeling great as a hitter, and then you face a guy who’s maybe not as good as the previous guy, but you’re not feeling good so he seems like he’s as good as the Cy Young guy you just faced.”

There’s no denying the downturn in fortunes. But the hitters believe in the process and McCann underscored the most meaningful aspects they’ve achieved and what they still could accomplish.

Baltimore leads the American League in wins. It still has one of the best offenses in the game. And championships aren’t decided in September; it takes a peak in October to finish atop the sport.

So, while there has been external noise and concern revolving around the Orioles’ offensive production, those within the organization hold a different view — one built on firsthand experience in the cage with a trio of hitting coaches as eager as anyone to see the ball fly off the bat once again.

“To the fans that call for drastic changes amid a slump, the body of work has been there. What we did last year offensively. Even what our numbers are this year, with the slump,” McCann said. “It’s not just the first two months of the season. It was last year; it was the end of ’22; it was the beginning of this season.”

Added O’Hearn: “With all of our young players trying to find their way in the game, I don’t think there’s a better group of hitting coaches to have in the cage and in our dugout than our guys.”