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).
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.
Robo umps are still super flawed, unfortunately.
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.
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
If we have every correct call from the computer then what is the point of a challenge? Either go all the way and get every call right or accept human error as part of the game. No need to waste time challenging individual pitches
@Samuel, what “group” other than the owners have the authority to make rule changes?
Human beings as umpires forever! Love the imperfection of it all and the verbal angst that manifests itself between an umpire and coach or player when there is a disagreement. Entertaining! Two words. “Earl Weaver”.
Oh hells yes!! Robo Umps, and no stupid challenges!
I can’t wait to see how great pitchers and hitters become when the strike zone doesn’t change…pitch to pitch.
It’s just obvious at this point.
Not sure what this entire sidebar discussion has to do with the hiring of this or that seemingly inept “hitting instructor” who was never much of a hitter of any renown, anywhere. I can understand hiring a formerly successful MLB hitter like an Edgar Martinez or Ichiro to be a hitting coach…but what could these nobodies who never swung a bat above A-ball or college ball possibly teach to MLB hitters today? I’m sure it goes in one ear , out the other. What a joke, ffs. Just get rid of that coaching level altogether. Let the manager, bench coach and /or infield coaches give hitting instruction.
“Edgar Martinez”.
Yep. What a swing or should it be referred to as “not an over swing” He and guys like Miggy, Olerud, Molitor and Barry Bonds kept it simple. Let the ball get deep and turn on it. In today’s game which puts emphasis on big swings to get torque to get high velocity impact, these sweet swinger types are disappearing from the MLB landscape. Sad.
So what would make more sense is to have the umpires connected to the pitchcom system. That way they know what’s coming in and can better judge pitches depending on the type of pitch. Currently they just have to go by best guess and what they can see in real time, often tricked by pitch framing. ABS systems will definitely be in place soon for challenging purposes but not to fully replace umpires, ever!
@ Wolves — why make a perfect system (ABS) imperfect just because it hurts the feelings Umpires/cheating Catchers? Humans being humans, they error, cheat, and get rubbed the wrong way…what do those things have to do with where a ball moved/traveled?
Balls and strikes are the most important/significant part of how a baseball game flows; from pitch selections, defensive shift’s, runners moving, hitters approach, offensive tactics. All of those things hinge on an umpires opinion. Players carrers are subjected to the calls as well. Hell, teams plan who the pitcher based on strike zone of Umpires and try and match them up when they can. All of this is about exploiting a weakness in the game (the inconsistent Strike Zone).
Humans can’t call all 200+ pitches correctly in a game, and even missing one could impact Teams and Players careers.
This isn’t about “getting rid of Umpires” (it’s only one job an Umpire has behind the plate).
Why reject profection (ABS)? Because people like blown calls? Because you should reward catchers for cheating? That chaos is cool?
Enough is enough. The strike zone COULD be 100% the same for every single game everyday, year in, year out. …but no??!??!!!???!
…and, just wanna point out, Framing pitches is the same thing as ‘flopping’ in the NBA: players trying to exploit the imperfections of the Officials to get a better outcome. It’s human nature, but it’s unsportsmanlike. Leagues can/should remove those things to allow for a better product/sports league.
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
Hard to know whether or how much the Twins hire was underway when the Orioles fired the other hitting coach (unless there’s something obvious in the timing I’m not aware of), but interesting to speculate.
We often hear that it’s custom for teams to allow other teams to interview coaches and front-office staff if the prospective position is a promotion. With two people formerly sharing the Os’ “hitting coach” title, this one doesn’t really sound like a promotion on paper, but quite possibly is a step up in practice. Or the prospect of Borgschulte co-coaching with a yet-unnamed new person next year left both sides more open to moving on.
Resistance is futile
You will be assimilated.
Twins brass must not have watched the ALDS vs the Royals. Brutal hire.
Good luck,Orioles hitting tanked in the second half!
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.
Nobody acquired at the deadline hit at all. No one really got any better this year and the offense plummeted. Wouldn’t put all that on the hitting coaches but I certainly am not disappointed with a fresh set of eyes coming in with some hopefully new ideas.
cooperhill;
What, they changed hitting coaches for the 2nd half?
The O’s FO messed with the chemistry starting around June – perhaps understandably – but that team played .500 ball for
more than half the season after a hot start.
Not sad to see him go.
Guys still awaiting their first shave don’t know crap.Give me Charlie Lau!
Wonder how much guys like this make ?
150 grand 200? 75?
Nope, not nearly that much.
Lower end of major league hitting coaches are around $200-300.
What a Borgschulte hire.
Great to see Borgy getting a solo job. As I’ve been saying on various posts, best hitting coach in the league and it’ll show. Good thing he didn’t come to his hometown Cards. He’d be the next scapegoat.