Twins hiring Matt Borgschulte from Orioles as hitting coach

As the Twins work on shaping the future of their major league hitting approach, they brought back somebody from their past.

The Twins are hiring Matt Borgschulte as a hitting coach, a source confirmed to the Minnesota Star Tribune. The team hasn’t formally announced the hiring. Borgschulte, who was the St. Paul Saints hitting coach in 2021, spent the past three seasons as a co-hitting coach with the Baltimore Orioles.

Borgschulte, 33, spent four seasons as a Twins minor league hitting coach from 2018 to ’21 and he was always a candidate for a spot on manager Rocco Baldelli’s staff. He worked closely with many current Twins hitters when he was at St. Paul, and Fort Myers in 2019, including Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach, Ryan Jeffers and Jose Miranda.

He was an NCAA Division II All-America at Drury University after transferring from Western Kentucky and was a college coach at Drury, Tusculum College and Southeast Missouri.

“Situational hitting approach, things like that, are going to be part of the conversation we have here around the next hitting group,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins’ president of baseball operations earlier this month. “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.”

The Orioles had already parted with Borgschulte’s co-hitting coach, Ryan Fuller, after they lost in the wild-card round to Kansas City, scoring one run in two games. Baltimore finished fourth in MLB in runs (786) and ranked third in slugging percentage (.435), but the offense was inconsistent following the All-Star break and struggled when hitting with runners in scoring position.

Ryan O’Hearn, along with several Orioles players, defended their hitting coaches during their late-season slump. O’Hearn, the first baseman/outfielder, told the Baltimore Banner that Borgschulte was good at explaining mechanics, but also “really good at game planning and how to attack each pitcher.”

The Twins dismissed their three hitting coaches — David Popkins, Derek Shoman and Rudy Hernandez — after they failed to make the postseason. The Twins cut down on their strikeouts compared to the 2023 season, but they were abysmal offensively in the final six weeks of the season.

“There were a lot of games that were tight, very tough ball games where we couldn’t really muster anything up,” Baldelli said at season’s end. “It depends on how you want to break it down and how you want to look at it, but I do think that that consistency in approach that I’m hoping we can carry out, that we need to carry out, for 162 games will be something that we address and that we can do better.”