Twins hope 33-year-old hitting coach Matt Borgschulte can develop young players

When manager Rocco Baldelli and Twins front office staff started preparing their list of candidates to become the club’s new lead hitting coach, Matt Borgschulte was a name they had on their minds.

Borgschulte returns to the organization after spending the last three years as a co-hitting coach with the Baltimore Orioles.

The Twins announced his hire as their lead hitting coach Tuesday, and Baldelli said they plan to hire one or two assistant hitting coaches underneath him.

“He’s proven the ability to build a hitting program and he’s done a really incredible job developing young offensive players and talent,” Baldelli said. “He’s got really good command of the technical elements of hitting and the swing, but he really drives home the approach and game planning elements of the job, too. That really impressed us as we talked to him through this process.”

Borgschulte, 33, was a part of the Twins’ minor league staff for three seasons before he took the job in Baltimore, including a year as the Class AAA hitting coach at St. Paul in 2021 and Class A-Advanced Fort Myers in 2019. From his previous stint in the organization, he has experience working with Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach, Ryan Jeffers and Jose Miranda.

“I’ve already gotten some messages from those guys,” said Borgschulte, who is called “Borgs” by people who work with him. “Continuing to reach out and see where they’re at, how things have gone over the past couple years. Just 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.”

The Twins scored the 10th-most runs in the majors last season (4.58 per game), but they dismissed all three hitting coaches — the Toronto Blue Jays hired David Popkins as their lead hitting coach Monday — after a team-wide slump dropped the club from a playoff position.

In the final six weeks of the season, the Twins hit .229 while scoring three or fewer runs in 17 of their last 30 games.

Many of their young hitters took a step back offensively. Lewis had a .474 OPS over his last 132 at-bats. Miranda had a .543 OPS with zero homers following the All-Star break. Edouard Julien had one homer in his last 186 at-bats and hardly played in the final weeks. Brooks Lee hit .178 in September.

Developing younger hitters will be one of Borgschulte’s most important tasks and it’s an area where the Orioles stood out. Baltimore’s Colton Cowser is the favorite to win the American League Rookie of the Year, and 23-year-old shortstop Gunnar Henderson should rank highly in the AL MVP voting.

“One of the biggest challenges in all of baseball is going from the minor leagues to the major leagues, and then making that initial adjustment but then making more secondary adjustments as time goes on and the league continues to understand who you are as a hitter,” Borgschulte said. “That’s something that I feel like I had some good experience with.”

Ten teams have already announced changes to their lead hitting coach this offseason. It’s a job with a lot of turnover, but the Twins have comfort with Borgschulte because of his background with their player development system and his results in Baltimore.

Baldelli likes the balance Borgschulte brings between talking specific swing mechanics with hitters and his ability to talk about general approaches against pitchers.

“When he left, everyone thought very positive things about Borgs,” Baldelli said. “It was an opportunity [with the Orioles] that he couldn’t turn down.

“We followed him closely all the years he was in Baltimore, and a lot of people here kept a lot of close connections with him. When we went into this, he was certainly a name that started out very much at the front of everybody’s mind, and through the process he worked his way to the very top.”