When Twins decisionmakers sat down and began discussing names for their vacant hitting coach position, one of the first that was brought to the table was one they eventually kept coming back to.
That was 33-year-old Matt Borgschulte, a former coach in their minor league system, who was coming off of three successful years as the Baltimore Orioles’ co-hitting coach.
Tuesday, the Twins officially introduced Borgschulte as their new head hitting coach, replacing David Popkins, who a day earlier was hired by the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Twins hired Popkins over Borgschulte, who at the time was their Triple-A hitting coach in St. Paul, ahead of the 2022 season, paving the way for Borgschulte to go to Baltimore and work with a lineup full of talented young players like Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman and Jackson Holliday.
“He’s proven the ability to build a hitting program and he’s done a really incredible job developing young offensive players and talent,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He’s got really good command of the technical elements of hitting and the swing but really drives home the approach and the game-planning elements of the job, too, and that really impressed us as we talked to him through this process.”
The Orioles finished near the top of the league in many major offensive categories this past season, including second in home runs, third in slugging percentage, extra base hits and total bases and fourth in the majors in OPS and runs scored.
The Twins, meanwhile, had stretches where they were among the best offenses in baseball, but were inconsistent throughout the year and tailed off over the last six weeks of the season, leading to them falling out of the playoff picture.
That drop off cost hitting coaches Popkins, Rudy Hernandez and Derek Shomon their jobs as the Twins opted to seek new voices to lead their offense. Baldelli said the Twins are currently working on their other hires at the moment and will back Borgschulte up with one or possibly two assistant hitting coaches.
While that process is underway, Borgschulte is undergoing his own process of familiarizing himself with his new (old) organization.
Many of the hitters he worked with in the minor leagues like Royce Lewis, Ryan Jeffers, Trevor Larnach and Jose Miranda, have now graduated to the majors and he’s been reaching out to the team’s position players to refamiliarize himself.
“(I’m) just kind of starting to get a glimpse of what their goals are for the offseason and then doing some digging to collaborate on a plan on exactly how they want to make the adjustments or continue with their success coming into next year,” he said.
Borgschulte cited the talent on the team and the chance both to work with Baldelli again and with the organization that gave him an early professional opportunity as factors in his decision to return.
He previously worked with the Gulf Coast League Twins in 2018, at Single-A Advanced Fort Myers in 2019, at the alternate site in 2020 and at Triple-A in 2021.
“It’s an exciting group of players and the front office has done a great job assembling a core group of guys that can do some things offensively and I’m excited to get to work with those guys and see what we can do,” Borgschulte said.
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