Rachel Balkovec became the first woman hired as a branch manager of a Major League Baseball club on Tuesday, when she was promoted by the New York Yankees to lead the Tampa Tarpons in Class A.
Balkovec, 34, joined the Yankees organization as a hitting coach in 2019. She was the first woman to serve full-time in those branch office roles.
She earned her first position on professional ball with the St. Louis Cardinals as a minor league strength and conditioning coach in 2012.
Balkovec, who was a catcher in softball with the Creighton and New Mexico teams, moved from the Cardinals to the Houston Astros in 2016.
She was hired as a strength and conditioning coordinator for Latin Americans, a position for which she learned Spanish.
Later, he served as a strength and conditioning coach on the Corpus Christi team, within Double A.
He briefly left baseball in 2018, to pursue a second master’s degree at Vrije University in the Netherlands where he also worked with the baseball and softball teams. He later worked for Driveline Baseball, a data-driven center that trains numerous major leaguers before they are hired by New York.
“I see my track record as an advantage,” she told The Associated Press in 2019. “I probably had to do a lot more than a male colleague, but I like that, because I’m so much more prepared for the challenges I might encounter.”
