Twins add hitting coaches Trevor Amicone and Rayden Sierra, name Ramon Borrego first base coach

New Twins hitting coach Matt Borgschulte now has a staff to work with.

The Twins on Thursday announced that Trevor Amicone, the Yankees’ Class AAA hitting coach the past two years, will be Borgschulte’s top assistant in 2025, and Rayden Sierra, the organization’s hitting coordinator for the low minor leagues over the past five years, will be elevated to Borgschulte’s staff, too.

Those three coaches replace former hitting coach David Popkins and his assistants, Derek Shomon and Rudy Hernandez, who were fired in October at the end of a disappointing season at the plate.

“It’s a dream, getting to the majors,” Amicone said. “It’s an honor to be part of the Twins organization. I want to win at the big-league level.”

He also wants to emulate a familiar figure to Twins fans.

“I learned more from James Rowson this year about how to communicate, how to teach, than I could have imagined,” Amicone said. “He was incredible in his ability to get big-league players to understand and internalize the information he was giving them, to get them in the best possible position to compete every night. His mentorship with me was outstanding.”

Not a bad reference.

Rowson was the Twins’ hitting coach for three seasons and helped them set a franchise scoring record, and the major league record for home runs, in 2019 before leaving Minnesota when the Marlins offered him a promotion to bench coach.

Rowson is now the Yankees’ hitting coach and spent last spring working with Amicone, who for the past three seasons has served in the same position for Scranton-Wilkes Barre, New York’s Class AAA affiliate. Under Amicone’s tutelage, the RailRiders set franchise records for scoring and home runs in 2023.

“Then in 2024, we broke the [scoring] record again by a hefty chunk, but we did it in a completely different way. That team didn’t hit home runs,” Amicone said. “The versatility, to be able to still score runs consistently in other ways, was the thing I was most proud of.”

Now Amicone will become the chief assistant to Borgschulte — who also worked under Rowson while in the Twins system.

In addition, the team said Thursday that first base coach Hank Conger, who also coaches the team’s catchers, has been promoted to assistant bench coach, replacing Tony Diaz.

And Ramon Borrego, who has managed the Twins’ Class AA team in Wichita for the past four seasons and has 21 years in the organization, will be promoted to the majors to replace Conger at first base and Diaz as the infield coach.

The announcements complete manager Rocco Baldelli’s 11-man coaching staff for 2025. Holdovers include bench coach Jayce Tingler, pitching coach Pete Maki and his assistant, Luis Ramirez, third base and outfield coach Tommy Watkins, bullpen coach Colby Suggs and quality-control coach Nate Dammann.