The Twins are hiring Orioles co-hitting coach Matt Borgschulte as their new hitting coach, replacing the recently dismissed David Popkins, as first reported by Brandon Warne. It’s a return to his first professional organization, as Borgschulte was a hitting coach in the Twins’ minor league ranks from 2018-21 before being hired to Baltimore’s big league staff for the 2022 season. Prior to his days as a coach in the Twins system, Borgschulte had been coaching at Southeast Missouri State University.
Borgschulte’s departure is the latest in a shakeup of the Orioles’ coaching staff on the heels of a second-half decline for the club, during which many of the team’s hitters struggled to produce at prior levels. His co-hitting coach, Ryan Fuller, was one of three coaches from whom the club moved on last week. Baltimore still has former big leaguer Cody Asche on manager Brandon Hyde’s staff as the “offensive strategy coordinator,” but it seems there’ll be a change of note in the organization’s messaging to a young core of hitters.
The Twins are plenty familiar with Borgschulte, of course, and will now install him on the club’s big league staff after declining to do so heading into the 2022 campaign. Dan Hayes of The Athletic tweets that Borgschulte was a finalist for what was then a vacant hitting coach position that ultimately went to Popkins.
Minnesota is undergoing a similar overhaul to its organizational hitting strategy. Popkins was one of four coaches the Twins cut loose. They also moved on from assistant hitting coaches Rudy Hernandez and Derek Shomon. Hernandez had been at his post as assistant hitting coach for nine years.
Though the second half of the season didn’t go well in Baltimore, Borgschulte clearly had a role in working with the Orioles’ impressive core of young hitters in recent years. It’s impossible to pin an entire organization’s successes or failures on one singular coach, but the O’s have churned out quality hitters like Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser in recent seasons while seeing veterans like Anthony Santander and Ryan O’Hearn take their offensive games to new levels. Minnesota will hope for similar strides among its own impressive core of young hitters, including Matt Wallner, Royce Lewis, Edouard Julien and Brooks Lee (among others).
whyhayzee
As soon as MLB comes to their senses and installs robot umpires, batters can focus on the pitch at hand instead of having to worry about whether the dumpire will make the right call. The same goes for pitchers. The game will improve immeasurably. But then MLB can’t fudge with the strike zone anymore. Aww, too bad. Just make the damn game better already.
RedFraggle
Robo umps are still super flawed, unfortunately.
Samuel
RedFraggle;
Yes.
From what I’ve heard, this is a major issue (and well may not be the only one):
Pitched balls move quite a bit from the time they reach the plate till the time they pass it, In that split second they will move in-and-out of the zone, or visa-versa. The ability to program the computer to make the call is there (there are multiple cameras from different angles around each park that feed into a central computer), The issue is that there has to be agreement – and I know this sounds funny – as to what a strike is. The programmers don’t care. It’s not their decision to make. But now we’re into bureaucracy – try to figure out what group has the right to make that ruling and sign-off on a spec to the programmers
I love watching the rectangular boxes on TV during games. But the fact is that what they display is often often questionable.
Inside Out
It works just fine in AAA. It will be the challenge system so ump will still call everything with only the egregious mistakes rectified by challenge. Better to use something that can get more calls right because the umpires are wrong a lot
StudWinfield
@Samuel, what “group” other than the owners have the authority to make rule changes?
VA/NC Orioles
Thought it was strange that the O’s moved on from one half of the hitting trust. Now we know he was moving on anyways. Could be a good hire for Minnesota but it was clear a change was needed in day to day management in Baltimore. The O’s abandoned their aggressive but not out of control philosophy the 2nd half of the season and couldn’t hit water from the boat in the playoffs.
Best of luck to Matt
MLB Top 100 Commenter
Resistance is futile
Monkey’s Uncle
You will be assimilated.
BaseballBrian
Twins brass must not have watched the ALDS vs the Royals. Brutal hire.
cooperhill
Good luck,Orioles hitting tanked in the second half!
MacGromit
Typical over-reactive fan response.
Players didn’t get it done. One co-hitting coach was not renewed. They other takes the major league hitting coach position with his previous club. “Good riddance” comments. Fans think swapping coaches is going to make all the difference.
Maybe, but we really don’t have any specific evidence or even leaked clubhouse rumor that pins the 1/2 half offensive dive on either. Easier to blame the coaches than to poke at players themselves or their relative youth in adjusting to the league adjusting to their book.
I’d think that it would be nice to have at least one upper percentile on base player in the lineup to keep rallies going. But I certainly don’t know more than the hitting coaches and FO. Just like to see the team fire on BOTH pitching and hitting at the same time.
jbigz12
Not sad to see him go.