Gemini hires Jayce Tingler as bench coach, David Popkins as percussion coach – Twin Cities

Rocco Baldelli’s coaching staff is almost done.

The twins announced the hiring of two new coaches – bench coach Jayce Tingler, former manager of the San Diego Padres, and hitting coach David Popkins Monday morning. They have expressed their intentions to hire yet another coach to round out their staff.

The new appointments come after the retirement of major-league coach Bill Evers and the reassignments of hit coach Edgar Varela and major-league field coordinator Kevin Morgan, who was a late addition to the coaching staff after bench coach Mike Bell died in March.

Tingler joins the Twins after spending the last two seasons as manager of the Padres. He led the Padres to the playoffs in 2020, where they lost to the Dodgers in the National League Division Series, finishing in second place in the National League Manager of the Year poll. But he was released by San Diego after the team missed the playoffs this year and ended a season where they had high expectations with a record of 79-83.

Before San Diego, Tingler, 40, spent the previous 13 seasons with the Texas Rangers, and overlapped with Twins general manager Thad Levine, who spent 11 seasons as assistant general manager there.

Tingler actually took over as Rangers assistant GM for two seasons after Levine’s departure before joining the major league staff. He served as Rangers’ interim bench coach briefly at the end of the 2018 season before becoming the coordinator for the development of major league players in 2019.

Popkins, 31, joins the Twins from the Dodgers organization, where he coached the minor-league system for the past three years, most recently in Class-A Advanced Great Lakes.

In his own playing career, Popkins, an outfielder, went without a draft from college before playing three minor league seasons in the Cardinals organization. He then played independent ball, and his career ended in 2017.