Minnesota’s new hitting coach, Matt Borgschulte, has a lot to fix with the team’s big-league hitters, but his most important task might be helping the team’s top prospect. Can he use the lessons he learned in Baltimore with Jackson Holliday to help Walker Jenkins?
As Matt Borgschulte rejoins the Minnesota Twins organization as the MLB hitting coach, his track record speaks to a unique knack for refining and maximizing young talent. His experience with Orioles top prospect Jackson Holliday (and other young players) provides a blueprint that he can now apply to the Twins’ star-in-the-making, Walker Jenkins. For Twins fans, there’s excitement in seeing Borgschulte return to familiar faces, like José Miranda, Ryan Jeffers, and Trevor Larnach. He guided these players during their development at the Twins’ alternate site in St. Paul during the 2020 pandemic-shortened season.
Borgschulte’s Breakthrough with Jackson Holliday
While with the Orioles, Borgschulte helped fast-track Holliday’s rise as one of baseball’s top prospects. His work with Holliday focused on two key areas: building a foundation of plate discipline and a mental framework to adjust seamlessly across different levels of competition. Borgschulte encouraged Holliday to work counts and select pitches he could drive. All of these qualities translate directly to Jenkins’s game, as he develops his power potential.
“You go through phases of swings,” Holliday said. “I was doing the no stride and I was spinning off balls. Now that I think I’m a little bit bigger and stronger and kind of understand my swing a little bit more, it was easier to go back to that. Last year, I did really well with the swing that I had with the leg kick, and I never really had to pull it out. Here we are now making adjustments in the big leagues.”
Borgschulte also cultivated Holliday’s mental approach, using game scenarios and simulated at-bats to prepare him for the intense competition at higher levels. When Holliday initially struggled at the big-league level, Baltimore’s hitting coaches put together a plan for him and the minor-league coaches to study and implement. They showed images contrasting the poor swings with his ideal cuts at the ball and suggested drill packages to adopt. He returned to the big leagues later in the season with improved results. In the team’s final eight games, he went 7-for-13 with a double and five walks.
Jenkins, known for his raw power and athleticism, can learn to embrace this approach, allowing him to leverage his strengths without sacrificing the selectiveness and mental resilience that top hitters exhibit. Borgschulte’s experience instilling these values with Holliday makes him uniquely suited to develop Jenkins into a balanced, dynamic force in the Twins’ lineup.
The Twins selected Jenkins with the hopes that he could become a future cornerstone of the franchise, and Borgschulte’s blueprint offers a promising way forward. With Jenkins, Borgschulte will likely prioritize controlled aggression, similar to what he implemented with Holliday. He will guide him toward choosing pitches he can punish, while avoiding the overzealous hacks that can hinder a developing hitter. Jenkins is known for his keen eye at the plate, as he had a .394 OBP last season with more walks (56) than strikeouts (47).