You can probably imagine that in the course of a clubhouse celebration, what with all the beer and champagne involved, someone might end up on the floor. It’s slippery and, well, loose in there.

But after a devastating season-ending defeat? That felt a little more like an exception. And yet there was Cody Asche in his shorts, hunched on the floor between lockers as he commiserated with a couple of small groups of Orioles hitters after the Oct. 2 loss that ended their season.

You might have mistaken the Orioles’ hitting strategy coach for one of the players at that point. Now, after the departures of co-hitting coaches Matt Borgschulte and Ryan Fuller for new jobs, Asche is set to be the Orioles’ lead hitting coach, with Tommy Joseph joining from the Seattle Mariners and Sherman Johnson promoted from the minors as assistants.

As far as responses to a second-half offensive collapse go, it certainly doesn’t represent a seismic shift in philosophy. New messengers with perhaps a slightly tweaked message was my personal expectation, communicated as many ways as I could.

That said, I’ve had conversations over the last month in which I’ve tried to self-scout and make sure that perspective was valid. The impressions I had kind of confirmed what executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said at the end of the season: The Orioles were going to evaluate everything they did and be hard on themselves.

In practice, that meant looking at what they value, the processes meant to bring those values about on the field, and their methods of instruction that are consistent from the complex leagues up to Camden Yards to ensure that it was all, essentially, still valid. Just because something has largely yielded results, as the Orioles’ offensive development practices and philosophies have, doesn’t mean it’s right going forward.

Elevating Asche and Johnson into prominent roles suggests the practices may not change much. Comparing what those two (and this leaves out Joseph, given I can’t speak to him or his background) to what things looked like under Borgschulte and Fuller feels beside the point.

I have seen Asche and Johnson, over a number of years, be extremely dedicated servants to the players they’re working with, helping them get better through sweat equity and connecting as energetic young coaches who are knowledgeable and understanding of how to communicate what a player needs to hear.

I also saw all of those things from Fuller and Borgschulte, so none of those are unique traits that the Orioles’ major league staff was lacking. (And at least this time around we can be spared the absurdity of hearing about how young the Orioles’ hitting coaches are.)

Of course, Asche was with the major league staff the last two years. He has a new job, but it’s unclear how different his day-to-day role will be. And the whole group is inheriting a sound operation with talent galore, up and down the lineup.

The Orioles’ offense was inefficient with runners in scoring position in the second half, a season after being one of the league’s best situational hitting clubs in recent history, and yet still finished 2024 as a top-five offense by countless measurements they value.

Asche, when he spoke to reporters in August, was asked about how walks were not one of those categories the team ranked highly in. He ended up giving what, until we hear from him, I will consider a mission statement of sorts from him as a coach. It blended his offensive philosophy, the understanding of the game’s challenges his five years in the big leagues provided, and his coaching approach all at once.

“We’d want to walk more and chase less,” Asche said. “That’s the pipe dream of every front office that builds a lineup. That’s the pipe dream of every manager and hitting coach. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out that way. I think we’re really just focused on grinding out at-bats. We talk a lot about setting our teammate up for success, and what does that look like? Sometimes, it’s a walk. Sometimes, a nine-pitch at-bat that might result in a strikeout. Sometimes it’s beating a first baseman to the bag and setting up a pinch hitter. …

“Of course we want to see more walks. Other teams would probably like to see us hit less homers too. That’s just the way it goes. But yeah, I would love to lead the league in homers. I’d love to lead the league in batting average and walks and slug, and we’d have the lowest chase and the highest meatball swing, but you’ve got to factor in your lineup and help guys do what they do best all the time without solely focusing on weaknesses, because if you tell a guy what he’s bad at enough, eventually he just believes that’s who he is, instead of showing them what they’re good at and making sure they’re really good at that.”

Sounds good, right?

It probably will to the Orioles’ hitters, too, though it’s not like they’re going to be hearing it for the first time. Come February and March, as things ramp up in spring training, we might hear about modest alterations to how the Orioles are doing things. Based on the group of hitting coaches they’ve put together, it’s unlikely to be more than that. And that feels appropriate to me.