Anthony Villa was a first-year minor leaguer who wanted to learn how to hit. During his online deep dive almost a decade ago, he found a physical therapy doctoral candidate in Missoula, Montana, whose hitting content was informed by the knowledge of how the body works: Dustin Lind.

Villa, now the Orioles’ director of player development, used Lind’s work to help him change his swing, and he reached out to meet Lind when his rookie-ball club visited Missoula. What began as a friendship morphed into a mentorship as the two got into coaching.

Now, with Lind hired to new manager Craig Albernazs’s staff as the club’s hitting coach, they get to work together as Lind is tasked with helping to resurrect the Orioles’ offense — and the homegrown core Villa helped develop along with it.

“I think they’re really going to enjoy Dustin for the person that he is, and also the knowledge base that he brings, and the relatability, and the experiences that he’s gone through, and being able to tie that together with our young, exciting group,” Villa said.

That knowledge base was what drew Villa to Lind’s work as he sifted through a vibrant online community of hitting instructors in 2016.

“If I were to ask you to swing a bat and describe what you’re feeling, you’re going to be describing it differently than me,” Villa said. “But as far as what is actually happening in the body, that’s a reality, that’s a truth. And Dustin, being as brilliant as he is, and at the time, studying, getting his doctorate in physical therapy, he was writing truth. He was stating the reality of what is going on in the body, and for someone who was trying to revamp their swing, it just made sense to learn what the body is actually doing and what you should be trying to reproduce.”

For Villa, that meant adjusting his posture to reshape his swing path and elevate the ball more naturally, along with setting up his body to rotate better. It worked. His second year in pro ball was far better than his first, and he got more than just swing tips out of the deal.

“He was always so gracious with his time and such a genuine person,” Villa said. “He really poured into people.” Although Lind jokes with Villa that he was a bad hitting coach because Chicago ultimately released Villa, the baseball industry disagreed.

Lind’s work caught the attention of the Seattle Mariners, who hired him in 2018 as a minor league quality assurance coach and elevated him to director of hitting development and strategies on the major league side in 2019. When Gabe Kapler was assembling a staff of up-and-coming coaches to work with him in San Francisco, he brought Lind on as assistant hitting coach and director of hitting.

Villa, meanwhile, was transitioning to coaching himself. He started with Texas in 2019, and Matt Blood brought him to Baltimore for 2020.

Lind’s influence was still strong. The Orioles gave their new hitting coaches, including Villa and former major league hitting coach Ryan Fuller, a blank slate to build out the program ahead of the 2020 season. They instituted so much of what Donnie Ecker (who was the Giants’ lead hitting coach and is now the Orioles’ bench coach), Lind and Albernaz — who was also on that Giants staff as the bullpen coach — were instituting.

“I guess the quick phrase would be, practice dirty, play clean, you know, taking on challenging, gamelike practice, because it then helps make the game easier,” Villa said. “Players are better prepared. A lot of those things are from Dustin and Donnie and Alby.”

Those are still core principles of how the Orioles teach hitting throughout the organization, and many of those practices apply in the majors, where Fuller, Cody Asche and Sherman Johnson have been hitting coaches after working in the club’s minor league system.

As such, each had a hand, along with Villa, in developing the team’s highly regarded homegrown hitters. Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, the team’s top two picks in the 2019 draft, effectively piloted the hitting program on their way to being top prospects in baseball and big league All-Stars. Colton Cowser, Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo, Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers have become major leaguers in the Orioles program.

But the club’s stumbles down the stretch in 2024 and the preponderance of injuries and underperformance in 2025 meant the team sought new voices, and on the hitting side there’s much at stake in doing so. For the Orioles to win in October, they need these players to lead the way.

Villa thinks Lind is going to help make that happen.

“I think, across the industry, we know what good offensive strategy is in general,” Villa said, referring to the club’s long-held pursuits of strike-zone control, contact and the ability to slug. “The challenge is to really be able to use your scalpel and dive in individually and tear away the layers of the individual and figure out how to get individuals to best perform. I do feel like our previous hitting coaches did a really good job of that and poured in a ton of effort on that. We’ve got this next group of staff members that are going to be coming into this role, and believe very much in their knowledge base, their expertise and their approach, and being able to target these individuals. And I’m super excited for Dustin and for [assistant hitting coach] Brady North to be able to really dive in on the individual level.”

Villa cited Albernaz’s comments from the winter meetings, both on MLB Network and during his media session, on doubling down on what individual players do well and accentuating those strengths.

“Our offensive philosophy is to touch home plate more than the other team before the 27th out happens,” Albernaz said. “That’s basically it. Our coaching staff, the reason I say that, it’s not tongue in cheek, but our coaches are going to cater to the individual, and I think that’s where we lose sight of what makes players special. And we’re going to be very individualized with how we attack each player and how we coach each player.”

Lind, having spent four years on the Giants’ staff before joining the Phillies as an assistant hitting coach the last two seasons, brings plenty of experience at that.

“For Dustin to come over, and bring some experiences of what it was like to work with Buster Posey in San Francisco, or Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, the superstars that they have over in Philadelphia, all of that is different and helpful,” Villa said. “Very excited that Dustin’s going to get to bring his expertise and experience to us now.”