Twins to Bring Back Matt Borgschulte as Hitting Coach

[Seth Stohs]

News broke this afternoon that the Twins will be bringing Matt Borgschulte in as the new hitting coach. He is not new to the organization. 

Image courtesy of USA Today Network

Following the conclusion of the frustrating end of the 2024 regular season, the Minnesota Twins announced the firings of assistant bench coach Tony Diaz and hitting coaches David Popkins, Rudy Hernandez and Derek Shomon. 

Brandon Warne was the first to tweet the news today that the Twins will be hiring Matt Borgschulte as Rocco Baldelli's next hitting coach. He was a finalist for the same role three years ago when they selected Popkins. 

He was with the Twins as a hitting coach from 2018-2021 at various levels from the Gulf Coast League to Triple-A St. Paul in 2021. 

He became one of two hitting coaches for the Baltimore Orioles starting with the 2022 season. Just think of some of the hitters he has worked with and helped develop in Baltimore. To what level of credit a hitting coach gets (or should get), he has worked with likes of All Stars Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, and Anthony Santander. He's worked with other young, talented Orioles hitters like Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad, Jordan Westburg, and Jackson Holliday. 

As the Twins look to continue adding to their coaching staff, it's important to remember how well they have done in naming minor-league coaches and coordinators. How do we know? Because other teams have taken them from the Twins and placed them in the big leagues. 

A quick look at the AL East is a good reminder of that. Along with Borgschulte, the Red Sox hitting coach is Peter Fatse. He avoided Boston's mass coaching changes announces recently. He was the Twins Minor League Hitting Coordinator in 2019. The Red Sox hired him as an assistant hitting coach after that season. He became the team's hitting coach before the 2022 season. 

Obviously James Rowson, the Yankees hitting coach, was the Twins hitting coach given a lot of credit for the 2019 Bomba Squad. Of course, he left to join Derek Jeter and the Marlins, which didn't exactly go well. He spent some time with the Tigers in 2023, but given the role with the Yankees and suddenly he's one of the top hitting coaches in baseball. 

In addition, the Twins hired Wes Johnson from the college ranks as the big-league pitching coach in 2019. That same year, they brought in Pete Maki to be the minor-league pitching coordinator. Maki joined the big-league staff for the 2020 season, and when Johnson went back to college, he took over as the pitching coach. 

In addition, Royals Director of Major League Pitching Strategy and Assistant Pitching Coach Zach Bove spent four seasons in the Twins organization, starting in the Florida Complex League and eventually became the assistant minor-league pitching coordinator before Matt Quatraro brought him onto the Royals' big-league staff. 

Of course, Bove was the assistant minor-league pitching coordinator under Justin Willard. Last offseason, the Red Sox plucked the Canadian from the Twins and made him the organization's Director of Pitching. He spends significant time working with Red Sox pitching coach Andrew Bailey but also a lot of time with pitchers and pitching coaches in the rookie leagues. 

Of course, the pitching coach of the New York Mets is former Twins coach Jeremy Hefner. When he retired, he joined the Twins as an advanced scout in 2017. In 2019, he was named the Twins assistant pitching coach (and bullpen coach). Following the 2019 season, the Mets hired him as their pitching coach. 

The Twins hired Tanner Swanson as the organization's first minor-league catching coordinator after the 2017 season. He immediately was given a ton of credit for working with Mitch Garver. After the 2019 season, the Yankees hired him as their major-league quality control coach and catching coordinator. I recall at the time, the Twins wanted to avoid losing him by offering him a big-league spot, but at the time, there wasn't a spot available. 

Soon after, 2018 and 2019 Twins bench coach Derek Shelton was named the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates starting in the 2020 season. While he inherited a really bad team, he's helped the Pirates improve. He has one of the most exciting young pitching staffs in baseball which should make Pittsburgh a playoff team starting as soon as 2025. 

It is great to hear that Matt Borgschulte will be the Twins new hitting coach. Will he get one assistant or two assistants? We shall see. 

Names to consider include a few from within the organization. The current minor-league hitting coordinator is Bryce Berg. Ryan Smith is the assistant minor-league hitting coordinator. Both of them are highly respected in the organization and around baseball. 

While it's impossible to score 100% in hires, the Twins have done a nice job of hiring coaches and coordinators and promoting them from within with a lot of success. 

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[mikelink45]

Interesting, but I find coaches and assistant coaches and all the other influences are really hard for a fan to judge.

[jmlease1]

well, he's from outside the organization, but since he was previously with the Twins I'm sure some people will be furious about this decision.

[ashbury]

Our new old hitting coach turns 34 in a couple of weeks. David Popkins is just under a year older than that.  I find it very interesting that such relatively young people are given the reins at the major league level, in preference to someone with decades of experience.  If it works out, great, but Popkins didn't last that long here.

It could be some variant of the Peter Principle at play here - someone with any abilities in one area may get promoted to some bigger job (bench coach, manager) until they reach a certain degree of failure, after which they either have lost their credibility or else (Rowson might be an example) latch on with someone else in a similar role to what they did succeed at.  Nothing new under the sun, maybe.

[BH67]

1 hour ago, mikelink45 said:

Interesting, but I find coaches and assistant coaches and all the other influences are really hard for a fan to judge.

In which case, here's an example for the commentariat: If David Popkins arrived in 1978, the year after Rod Carew batted .388 (1.019 OPS), what would be different in the '78 Carew under his tutelage from the real one (.333 and .853) in terms of technique? Apply the same to Borgschulte if you wish, and incorporate direction from Falvey. Asking a lot, but I appreciate specifics.

[Linus]

For me the most important point is whether the orgs hitting philosophy will change. If not I am not sure it matters who the coach is. I will say that Falvey has generally done really well with his coaching hires. 

[CRF]

It's impossible to know if this is a good move or not...yet They probably need to change the philosophy for the entire organization. I hope he knows what the heck he's doing, and I wish him the very best of luck. 

[Seth Stohs]

50 minutes ago, CRF said:

It's impossible to know if this is a good move or not...yet They probably need to change the philosophy for the entire organization. I hope he knows what the heck he's doing, and I wish him the very best of luck. 

They made a pretty significant organizational philosophical change last offseason. After all the strikeouts the previous year, they cut down that number significantly this year. And, talking to some guys in Cedar Rapids and elsewhere, that was voiced throughout the organization. I think the big area of focus this year needs to be on the situational hitting and understanding. 

 

[DocBauer]

What i recall was a lof of prospects, and some vets who were on rehab or worked with him during ST, really speaking in glowing terms of him and his approach. Based on that, I was rather bummed when the Twins didn't hold on to him and promote him.

But it's pretty hard to turn down a job with a ML club.

We'll see how it turns out. 

[thelanges5]

Lots of good young hitters with the Os. He already has relationships and has worked with some of our young guys. That seems like a plus. 
 

Os 16th with RISP and Twins were 18th so that doesn’t fit with what Falvey called out as far as situational hitting. 
 

I do like that he has experience as a hitting coach. 

[Doctor Wu]

13 hours ago, ashbury said:

I find it very interesting that such relatively young people are given the reins at the major league level, in preference to someone with decades of experience. 

Interesting, yes, and a bit unconventional too. Or at least it would have been an "outside the box" type of move a decade or two ago. Seems like the coaching ranks are getting younger and sometimes with coaches that have little or no experience playing at the MLB level. I have no real opinion as to whether this is a savvy hiring or not, I just hope he clicks with the players and we start getting more hits and runs across the plate. 

[killertwinfan]

Tough assignment with this bag of clowns. 

[Danchat]

Seems like he is fairly qualified. There was quite a debate about Popkins when he was hired, and it seems the doubters were right, given that he didn’t seem qualified to be a major league hitting coach.

[Blyleven2011]

17 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

Interesting, but I find coaches and assistant coaches and all the other influences are really hard for a fan to judge.

Or even get excited about ...

[Doctor Gast]

2 hours ago, Danchat said:

Seems like he is fairly qualified. There was quite a debate about Popkins when he was hired, and it seems the doubters were right, given that he didn’t seem qualified to be a major league hitting coach.

I had my doubts about Popkins when he was hired. Popkins had a sparkling HR production on his resume, so I thought he'd be just an HR-driven coach that fit into Falvey's HR-crazed hitting philosophy. I was assured that he wasn't & I've seen that come to fruition by what he has done helping hitters to get away from that approach & how quickly he had turned around the team early this season, from HR focused ABs to having good ABs.

On the other hand, Borgschmite was let go because of the team's high drop in offense in the 2nd half. Popkins was Falvey's sacrificial lamb to take the fall for his faulty hitting philosophy. IMO Borgschmites is worse than Popkins. Another Falvey's yes-men to support his philosophy.

[Doctor Gast]

15 hours ago, Seth Stohs said:

They made a pretty significant organizational philosophical change last offseason. After all the strikeouts the previous year, they cut down that number significantly this year. And, talking to some guys in Cedar Rapids and elsewhere, that was voiced throughout the organization. I think the big area of focus this year needs to be on the situational hitting and understanding. 

 

I really hope so, Seth. & I hope that they don't fall back to the old philosophy. Baldelli said that he got after the players for not following "the plan". That's what I hate, vagueness, what is "the plan"? Being vague we can't evaluate what he's saying, he expects us just to blindly accept what he's saying without understanding exactly what he's saying.

[TwinsDr2021]

On 10/14/2024 at 7:23 PM, Seth Stohs said:

They made a pretty significant organizational philosophical change last offseason. After all the strikeouts the previous year, they cut down that number significantly this year. And, talking to some guys in Cedar Rapids and elsewhere, that was voiced throughout the organization. I think the big area of focus this year needs to be on the situational hitting and understanding. 

 

I believe what you are saying, but I don't see results match the pretty significant organizational philosophical change statement? It did on the Twins they cut down their strikeouts by over 20% (1654 - 2023, 1306 - 204) which is a difference of 348, but between Gallo and Taylor that is 272, removing then brings it down below 10% reduction.

The minors?

2024, 2023 - difference

AAA 1372, 1459 -6%

AA 1276, 1320 - 3%

A+ 111, 1275 - 13%

A 1173, 1253 - 6%

And one argue the biggest difference in A+ and AA was due to the fact ERod left high A and went went to AA and was hurt for a large portion of the year.

[Dave Borton]

On 10/14/2024 at 3:39 PM, mikelink45 said:

Interesting, but I find coaches and assistant coaches and all the other influences are really hard for a fan to judge.

Granted. But what I find of interest is that he wanted to return to the Twins. Had a great job with Orioles, had a future there, but when money AND more came knocking, he found the Twins as a good organization to rejoin.

My only hope is that we will move away from a hitting philosophy of "3 outcomes." I listened to alot of Guards and Tigers this summer. Vogt and Hinch employed small ball and in other situations, it was long ball. Swinging "from the heels" on every occasion is a recipe to mediocrity if you don't have Judge et al in slots 1-9. Pass it on; mix it up.