Following their late-season collapse, the Minnesota Twins want to alter their offensive philosophy and hope to do so by bringing back an old friend. A team source said Monday the Twins are set to name former Triple-A hitting coach Matt Borgschulte as their major-league hitting coach.
Borgschulte left the Baltimore Orioles, where he was a co-hitting coach the previous three seasons, to fill the vacancy created by the recent dismissals of hitting coaches David Popkins and Rudy Hernandez and assistant hitting coach Derek Shomon. Despite producing a top-10 run-scoring offense in each of the past two seasons, the Twins fired their trio of hitting coaches on Oct. 2.
A popular minor-league hitting coach with the Twins from 2018-21, Borgschulte was a finalist when the Twins named Popkins hitting coach in 2022. Borgschulte joined Baltimore shortly after the Twins decided not to give him the job.
Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey suggested on Oct. 4 that a change in overall approach would be a key topic as the club considered hitting coach candidates.
“Situational hitting approach, things like that, are going to be part of the conversation we have here around the next hitting group,” Falvey said. “What that looks like, what were we missing on that. It did feel like, particularly in certain situations, it was hard for us to execute on maybe a key moment. Especially late, and maybe that’s why it’s so prominent in our minds, because of what it was like late. That was a challenge to us.”
For the season, the Twins scored 742 runs, an average of 4.6 per game. They finished 10th in runs scored among 30 teams and ninth with a 107 Weighted Runs Created Plus, according to FanGraphs. Over Popkins’ three seasons as hitting coach, the Twins ranked 10th in wRC+ out of 30 teams.
But as they disintegrated during a 12-27 finish, the Twins’ offense was feeble. Minus the services of Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton for nearly a month during the stretch, the Twins batted .228/.292/.354 over their final 39 games.
A team that averaged 1.2 homers per game for three-quarters of the season hit only 31 in its final 39 contests.
Nick Pivetta, Knee Buckling 84mph Slider. 🦵 pic.twitter.com/KEFUdSCxBM
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 22, 2024
For the season, the Twins were just 12-36 (.250) when they didn’t hit a home run, including a 2-16 mark over their final 39 games. According to STATS Perform, teams played at a .302 clip when they didn’t homer this past season.
Despite a massive reduction in strikeouts from 2023 when they set an all-time major-league record — their 1,306 strikeouts were the ninth-fewest in baseball in 2024 — the Twins struggled when they didn’t clear the fence. The team’s inability to be productive when it didn’t homer was a catalyst for this change.
Whereas previously the Twins focused on looking for certain pitches in specific locations, a style fans have described as “all or nothing,” the team hopes to put together more productive at-bats in the future. Under Borgschulte, Baltimore was 13-27 (.325) in games in which it didn’t homer.
Even though the Twins scored as many runs as they did, Falvey and Baldelli felt the team underachieved.
“We had a really good offensive team,” Falvey said. “We felt that from the get-go. We felt we should land in that range of offensive teams. This is where runs scored in aggregate is a piece of the puzzle, but how do you approach certain situations and games that are tighter and against the best bullpen arms in the game? How do you navigate those things? What could we have done differently or better? We all have to dive into that and think about it. You empower the people that are responsible for that area to do that work. I would not have expected our offense to struggle the way it did down the stretch collectively and that we need to own and figure out how we fix and make sure we’re in a better place going forward.”
Despite minimal experience, the Twins hired Popkins from the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was a minor-league hitting coordinator, because they believed he could help them make significant gains as teams modernized hitting programs the way they did with pitching over the previous decade.
The Twins were impressed Popkins didn’t subscribe to one particular swing and wanted to tailor his approach to each individual hitter.
A product of a Dodgers organization known to be on the cutting edge of modern offensive philosophy, the Twins also loved how Popkins was up to date on recent trends in the game. Beyond that, they appreciated how he blended analytical information with scouting reports.
Popkins was popular with Twins hitters, including Correa, who called him the best major-league hitting coach he’d ever played for.
“Pop had a lot of those skills and the ability to integrate some of that stuff, too,” Falvey said. “All of those are resources just like the advent of video and when that came along, you looked at swings differently. Then all of a sudden there’s new data and technology around pitch types and spin and what happens there, the Pitch F/X era into the TrackMan era. That’s true also of the evolution of hitting, of running. … You’re ultimately going to have to serve all of (your players). All of them are going to have different needs and focuses and we’ve got to figure out what’s the right intersection between utilizing some of that information, which a lot of teams do well. I think we do well in some ways and some ways we need to be focused on approach things that are a little bit more traditional because that’s part of it. We’re focused on that too.”
The hope is Borgschulte can help the Twins find the right blend.
Featuring a team full of talented, young hitters selected near the top of the draft, Baltimore’s offense was elite this past season. The Orioles scored the fourth-most runs in baseball (786) and were second in home runs (235) and third in wRC+ (117).
Former Twins outfielder Rob Refsnyder credited Borgschulte with making in-season adjustments in 2021 that helped him turn around his career.
From 2015-2021, Refsnyder carried a 70 OPS+. After incorporating a toe tap in April 2021, Refsnyder began to hit for more power. Over the past three seasons in Boston, Refsnyder has a 119 OPS+.
“(Borgschulte is) really good,” Refsnyder said. “He’s young. He studies and he knows what he’s talking about. I think, shortly, he’ll be in the big leagues here as a hitting coach.”
(Photo: Michael Zagaris / Oakland Athletics / Getty Images)
