Borgschulte hopes to use Major League lessons to help Twins prosper 

MINNEAPOLIS -- The success of the Twins’ 2025 lineup could largely hinge on the ability of the coaching staff to not only smooth out the inconsistencies in production and situational hitting that led to the ups and downs of the offense, but also to guide the organization’s young core through growing pains.

So, they brought in a new -- and old -- mind with plenty of familiarity in developing young hitters, with the organization formally introducing Matt Borgschulte as the club’s new head hitting coach on Tuesday.

Borgschulte -- a former Minor League hitting coach in the Twins’ organization -- spent the last three seasons as a co-hitting coach with the Orioles, where he helped a young offense spurred by a plethora of talented but still developing hitters blossom into one of the league’s most productive units.

“To me, that’s 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.

On a game-by-game basis, greater consistency within the season and bringing home runners to better take advantage of scoring opportunities (21st in Majors in batting average with RISP) will obviously be important for the Twins to leave behind their 12-27 finish to the season (and, before that, their 9-13 start).

But in the bigger picture, much of that improvement will likely hinge on taking the club’s young but struggling-at-times hitters like Royce Lewis, Alex Kirilloff, Jose Miranda, Brooks Lee and Matt Wallner, among others, and raising both their floor and ceiling as they all continue their adjustments to the Major League level.

Borgschulte, 33, obviously knows what the Twins have long tried to teach their hitters to do -- make good swing decisions and hit hard line drives -- but manager Rocco Baldelli also noted that something that helped Borgschulte stand out early and prominently in the process was the ways in which the coach melded the balance of teaching process, philosophy and mechanics.

“I think that Borgs does a very nice job of balancing those things along with the work that is done specifically with each hitter on their swing,” Baldelli said. “You have to have a really good understanding of both sides of that, both the swing and the approach. I think those are things that he thinks about a lot, has a good ability to communicate about and ultimately train.”

After the Twins parted ways with all three of their hitting strategy leaders -- hitting coaches David Popkins and Rudy Hernandez, and assistant hitting coach Derek Shomon -- the leadership structure will be different, with Borgschulte slated to stand alone as the club’s lead hitting coach and “at least one” assistant hitting coach expected to slot in behind him, Baldelli said.

There’s familiarity in the philosophy and in the process from Borgschulte’s four years with the organization, spanning the Rookie level all the way to the Triple-A level by 2021, but Borgschulte noted that his three years of big league coaching experience with the Orioles have also attuned his focus to some of the smaller details on the margins that he hopes will make a difference.

“I kind of grew up a little bit in this system in terms of some of the philosophical pieces,” Borgschulte said. “When you make it to the Major Leagues, and you start to really see how thin the margins are in terms of winning or losing games, some of your beliefs might change a little bit. Some of the things might improve a little bit.”

Situational hitting, for instance.

That’s something both Baldelli and president of baseball operations Derek Falvey pointed to as an area of concern and potential improvement following the end of a disappointing season in Minnesota, and Borgschulte verbally highlighted that as an area on his mind as he begins the process of learning (and, in some cases, re-learning) the individual ins and outs of his new stable of hitters.

“Situational hitting is something I truly believe is an important piece of the game,” Borgschulte said. “The thin margins of winning and losing at the Major League level, when you're able to execute in those situations, it really makes a big difference, especially when you have pitchers on the mound that are doing really well.”