Austin Hays on the Orioles strong contact rate Monday night against Boston

So this Orioles-Red Sox series got a bit more interesting today when O’s manager Brandon Hyde said comments that Boston manager Alex Cora made last night were “disrespectful to our hitters.”

Cora seemed to grudgingly, if at all, give the Orioles credit for making such good contact on a night they did not strike out in their 5-4 comeback win over Boston.

It was the first time the Orioles did not strike out even once in a game since Aug. 8, 2010 versus the Chicago White Sox. On the night O’s batters swung at 65 pitches and whiffed just four times, per Statcast. They swung and missed on just two of 42 swings against Chris Sale, a strikeout pitcher who had a 15.0 K rate this year going into that game. He had fanned 11 in six innings in his previous start against Minnesota, getting 19 swings and misses.

“At one point there, there was no swings and misses on tough pitches. Got to give credit to them I guess," Cora said as part of his postgame comments Monday.

“I’m not sure what he was getting at. Honestly pretty disappointed in hearing that,” Hyde said this afternoon in a response to a question about Cora's comments. “Thought it was disrespectful to our hitters, to be honest with you. I thought we had a great plan. We had major league hitters take really good at-bats and I loved our approach last night,” Hyde said.

A Boston Globe reporter tweeted today that “Cora said he wasn’t trying to disrespect anyone – and that he’s the last person who would accuse anyone based on his wrongdoing with the 2017 Astros. He said he’ll talk to Hyde to clarify that he simply wondered if Sale was tipping pitches.”

Before today’s Hyde pregame media briefing, I asked O’s outfielder Austin Hays what made Monday such a good night of consistent contact for Orioles hitters?

“I saw that was the first big league game (with no strikeouts) since 2017. Pretty wild. I think just everybody buying into the plan. We come in every day, we prepare for what we are going to see that day. We train with whatever we need with, machines, different angles. You still have to go out there and execute it.

"Yesterday was a prime example of us showing up, building a plan, training, and then one through nine executing the plan all the way through. And I felt like he was in a groove early and we got to that fourth inning and just continued to battle. Fouled off tough pitches. A one through nine relentless mindset of just all buying in.”

Through the first 22 games this year, while posting a 15-7 record, the Orioles continue to lead all of major league baseball in pitches per plate appearance at 4.11. They are tied for first in the American League in walks and are third in team OBP in the league at .336.

Hays said these numbers are really good for this team and are numbers that may be sustainable through the year.

“Yeah, I think it is (sustainable), because it’s something we are working on. Something we talked a lot about last year. We’ve had some growing pains going through it. A lot of our young players that have come up – that was something that was preached a lot in the minors. You see it with their plate discipline. And some of us that weren’t that good at that, we’re really buying into it as a team.

"We want to stay within the zone, get pitches to hit hard, not miss them and just really make the pitcher work. Make him get us out, inside the zone. When everybody buys into that you get the product that we are getting out there. So I think yeah it is sustainable. It is something that we are working on, it is not just a lucky byproduct of something else."

The O's low total of four swings and misses last night tied for their fewest in the Statcast era (since 2015) with four whiffs on Sept. 22, 2019 versus Seattle. All nine hitters recorded a hit in a game for the first time since Aug. 6, 2022 against Pittsburgh.

In four games against Boston this season, the Orioles have scored 28 runs while batting .354/.426/.590/1.016 with seven home runs.