Though the sting of David Popkins’ firing remains, two prominent Minnesota Twins players are optimistic about reuniting with new hitting coach Matt Borgschulte.
Royce Lewis and Ryan Jeffers are among the players with whom Borgschulte already connected after the Twins officially named him their new hitting coach Tuesday. The pair of core players worked directly with Borgschulte when he coached at the Twins’ High-A Fort Myers affiliate in 2019.
Though each player’s swing is different now than it was earlier in their careers, both were upbeat when speaking about their previous experiences with Borgschulte, who worked as a Twins minor-league coach from 2018-21 before spending the past three seasons as the Baltimore Orioles’ co-hitting coach.
Borgschulte takes over as the Twins’ hitting coach after the Twins dismissed Popkins and hitting coach Rudy Hernandez, and re-assigned assistant hitting coach Derek Shomon, on Oct. 2 in the wake of a massive season-ending slump. The Twins could hire as many as two assistant hitting coaches to work alongside Borgschulte.
“Just having one conversation with him already, I’m excited to have new eyes on my swing, to have a new thought process,” Jeffers said. “It’s always good to continue to evolve and learn and sometimes another set of eyes are good for that. … I know what Baltimore’s offense has done and know who Borgs is. I have no doubt that he’s going to step in and be phenomenal.”
The Twins needed to do well in naming a replacement for Popkins, who was hired to be the Toronto Blue Jays’ hitting coach on Monday. Over the past two seasons, Popkins’ offenses ranked 10th among baseball’s 30 teams in runs scored and sixth in weighted runs created plus (107).
Popkins was popular with Twins players, a fixture in the batting cages. Jeffers credits Popkins for building his swing and giving him a viable career while Carlos Correa identified Popkins as the best hitting coach he’d ever had in the major leagues.
Losing Popkins wasn’t easy for Twins players to digest.
But the Twins appear to have found a strong path forward in Borgschulte. Not only does he have rapport with many Twins hitters, but Borgschulte also boasts a strong resume. Over the past two seasons, Baltimore ranked fourth in runs and wRC+ (110).
“I’ll miss Pop,” Lewis said. “He was a great person, great coach and we always worked as hard as we could to figure stuff out. Now, it’s on to the next chapter with Borgs. It’s almost like go back and review. It’s going to be fun to see what he sees.”
One of the primary areas identified by the Twins earlier this month they’d like to adjust is situational hitting and overall approach.
The Twins weren’t thrilled with the offense’s performance when home runs disappeared down the stretch as the team went homerless in 18 of its final 39 games. The Twins went 2-16 in those contests and won only 12 of their 48 games in which they didn’t homer on the season, their .250 winning percentage registering well below the league’s .316 mark.
While the Twins believed Popkins to be an excellent swing technician, they’re looking for a coach who can diagnose what’s wrong with a swing while concurrently implementing a better approach. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli thinks Borgschulte is the right fit.
“You have to have a really good understanding of both sides of that, both the swing and the approach,” Baldelli said. “I think those are things that he thinks about a lot, has a good ability to communicate about and ultimately train because that’s what we are going to be doing. We are going to be training our hitters to do the things that we think are going to be beneficial to winning games.”
Similar to the Twins, Baltimore’s offense slumped over the final quarter of the season. A team that scored 5.1 runs per game for the first 123 contests only produced 4.1 runs over the final 39 games, a stretch in which the Orioles went 19-20.
The Twins scored 3.6 runs per game over their final 39 contests, going 12-27 in the process and missing the playoffs. Despite its slump, Baltimore reached the playoffs as a wild-card team only to be swept by Kansas City in the American League Wild Card Series.
Borgschulte was retained by the Orioles, but co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller was dismissed on Oct. 14. Three years after he was a finalist for the Twins’ job, Borgschulte said he’s learned much during his time in the majors.
“You start to really see how thin the margins are in terms of winning and losing games,” Borgschulte said. “Some of your beliefs might change a little bit. Some of the things might improve a little bit. I think the experience that you get in the major leagues really helps you understand exactly how important certain aspects of the game are to winning. Ultimately, our job is to score as many runs as we can and we’re going to try to find every single way that we can to do that.”
While Borgschulte will likely bring in a new philosophy and different verbiage from Popkins, many Twins players have a sense for who he is. Lewis, Jeffers, Trevor Larnach and Jose Miranda all played at High-A Fort Myers in 2019.
At that point in his career, Jeffers, who was in his first full professional season in 2019, didn’t need to consider massive swing alterations because he was having success. He didn’t overhaul his swing until after struggling during his first two big-league seasons, meaning he still needs to “get in the weeds” with Borgschulte.
But at the very least, Jeffers is eager to work with the new coach.
“I turned the keys over to Pop to kind of build my swing and he’s turned my career around offensively,” Jeffers said. “And that’s not to say that Borgs can’t do the same thing. I know him as a person. He’s an absolutely phenomenal dude. He’s soft-spoken. He’s energetic. He’s a great listener. I think there’s a lot of really good qualities about him that are going to play great in this role.”
(Top photo of Ryan Jeffers: Bruce Kluckhohn / Imagn Images)
