Balkovec first female manager of a small division team

NEW YORK (AP) – The New York Yankees are promoting Rachel Balkovec to Low A Tampa Tarpons manager, making her the first woman to skip a team affiliated with Major League Baseball, according to two people familiar with the matter. with this move.

These people spoke to the Associated Press on Sunday night on condition of anonymity because the club has not yet announced the promotion.

Balkovec, 34, joined the Yankees as hitting coach in 2019, making her the first woman to do that job full-time on an affiliated baseball team. She got her first place in professional football with St. Louis Cardinals as executive coach and minor league strength in 2012.

Balkovec, a former softball catcher at Creighton College and the University of New Mexico, moved from the Cardinals to the Houston Astros in 2016. She was hired as a Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator, a position that She studied Spanish, and later became a strength and conditioning coach at Double-A Corpus Christi.

She briefly left baseball in 2018 to pursue a second master’s degree at Vrije University in the Netherlands, where she also works with the country’s national softball and baseball teams. She then worked for Driveline Baseball, a data-driven baseball center that trained many major jumpers, before being hired by New York.

“I see my path as an advantage,” she told the Associated Press in 2019. “I probably have to do more than maybe as a male partner, but I like that because I’m a lot more prepared for the challenges I might face.”

Balkovec’s advertisement was first reported by The Athletic.