At last week’s season postmortem, Mike Elias and Brandon Hyde acknowledged a frequent complaint among onlookers throughout the campaign. The Orioles, when they were performing their best, hit for power — they drove the ball out of the park, in particular.

At its best, the results were rousing. They’d bring the Camden Yards crowd to their feet with multi-home run performances, with bat flips and chugs from the hydration station.

At its worst, the results were painful, with big swings leading to whiffs, with runners left in scoring position and a homer dependency clear to all who observed.

“It was a lot more of a challenge to score runs, and we relied on the homer,” Hyde, the manager, said of the second half. “When you’re facing really good pitching, that’s tough to do.”

Elias, the team’s general manager, said he “definitely experienced the frustration” that coincides with an offense that is boom or bust. Just how big-swing-oriented were the Orioles? Only two teams scored a higher percentage of their runs this season via homers: the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees.

Here’s how it breaks down.

• Athletics: 48.99% (315 runs off homers/643 runs total)
• Yankees: 48.22% (393 runs off homers/815 runs total)
• Orioles: 47.71% (375 runs off homers/786 runs total)

When combining numbers from across baseball in 2023 and 2024, the major league average was 40.73%. The game has shifted this way — analytics show that home runs bring a higher value per plate appearance than, say, singles — but, when the long ball goes missing, the best offenses can produce in a variety of ways.

The Orioles were lacking in that area. It showed in the two-game sample of the American League Wild Card Series, when the Kansas City Royals beat Baltimore while allowing just one run. It also was on display for much of the season, with the Orioles hitting .251 (17th) with runners in scoring position. Their wRC+ (a metric that ranks how productive an offense is) placed the Orioles 16th in those high-leverage situations.

When compared to last year, when Baltimore had one of the most high-powered offenses with 807 runs scored, only 37.17% of those came via homers.

It was much the same group of players. It was the same hitting instructors. And yet it was a different result. In terms of wRC+ in 2023, no team was better with runners in scoring position than Baltimore. Its .287 average was also the highest in the majors in those spots.

When considering the change in offensive production and results, Hyde pointed to injuries and second-half slumps for key players. Both areas hurt. Baltimore was without Jorge Mateo, Jordan Westburg, Ryan Mountcastle and Ramón Urías for long stretches. Adley Rutschman, a key producer with runners in scoring position, slumped after the All-Star Game.

Elias said there’s a certain amount of luck involved with hitting with runners in scoring position. “It’s a tricky thing, hitting,” he said. But Elias said the Orioles are “going to examine everything about our offensive approach, teachings, the mix of personnel” this offseason to find more consistency.

“I don’t believe it’s necessarily all chance,” Elias continued. “I do think there are things that our organization and ultimately our players will be able to do to improve our odds on that front. That’s not a good experience going through that for months where we’re struggling to get runners in from second base. That wasn’t the case last year. We were great at it with a lot of the same guys. A lot of confidence that that can correct next year, but it’s going to involve some work by us.”

One of the largest areas for improvement could be to reduce their reliance on the long ball. The Orioles generally don’t believe in a small-ball approach — their six sacrifice bunts tied for the second fewest in the majors — but a focus on hard contact doesn’t necessarily force a player to chase pitches out of the strike zone or focus exclusively on maximizing loft.

Look at how the Royals beat the Orioles. The winning hit in both games was a ground ball from Bobby Witt Jr. That may well sit with Baltimore all winter — a reminder that a home run is great but there is more than one way to score runs.