Marlins Hire Rachel Balkovec As Director Of Player Development
The Marlins have hired Rachel Balkovec to be their director of player development, per a report from Christina De Nicola of MLB.com. She has previously been managing for Single-A Tampa in the Yankees’ organization.
Balkovec, 36, has lots of experience working in the minor leagues, having originally been hired by the Cardinals in 2012 as an interim strength and conditioning coach. She later had the interim tag removed from that title in 2014. She jumped to the Astros in 2016, becoming that club’s Latin America strength and conditioning coordinator, learning to speak Spanish for the role. The Astros moved her to their Double-A affiliate in 2018.
Going into 2020, she was hired by the Yankees to be a minor league hitting coach and then got promoted to manage with Single-A Tampa prior to the 2022 campaign. She has held that gig with the Tarpons for the last two seasons but has now found another opportunity with the Marlins.
As noted by De Nicola, Balkovec has often been the first woman to hold these roles, being the first to become a full-time strength and conditioning coach in affiliated baseball, the first to serve as a full-time hitting coach in an affiliated organization and the first to be a full-time manager for an affiliate.
The Marlins have been undergoing changes in their front office in recent months, with general manager Kim Ng departing the organization as owner Bruce Sherman planned to hire a president of baseball operations to work above her. Sherman expressed concerns about the club’s track record in terms of drafting and developing prospects, something that Balkovec will now be involved in. Geoff DeGroot was let go as director of player development in September of 2022 but wasn’t replaced until now. Peter Bendix was brought over in November from the Rays, a club with a strong reputation for player development, to take the president of baseball operations role.
Yankees Name Rachel Balkovec As Manager Of Lower-A Affiliate
The Yankees have made a groundbreaking hire in their minor league ranks, as The Athletic’s Lindsey Adler (Twitter link) reports that Rachel Balkovec will manage the organization’s lower-A team in Tampa next season. Balkovec will become the first woman to ever manage an affiliated minor league club.
This is the latest of several barriers broken over the course of Balkovec’s decade-long career in baseball. Beginning as a strength and conditioning coordinator in the Cardinals’ farm system from 2011-15, she then moved to a similar role with the Astros from 2016-18, working with both Houston’s Latin American prospects and then the Astros’ Double-A affiliate. She has spent the last two seasons working within the Yankees’ minor league system as a hitting coach, following some time spent working with Driveline and in the Netherlands working with the Dutch national teams.
Along the way, Balkovec has routinely been noted as the first woman to be hired in these positions, whether in her strength/conditioning jobs or as a hitting coach. The 34-year-old will now take yet another step forward managing some of the Yankees’ top young prospects, and Balkovec is undoubtedly already familiar with many of these players due to her coaching work.
As Balkovec told The Associated Press’ Ronald Blum in 2019, “I have aspirations of being in a more leadership role from a broader standpoint,” mentioning the possibility of one day being hired as a “director of baseball operations or farm director or GM.” Such goals aren’t as remote as they once seemed for women in baseball, considering that Kim Ng is the Marlins general manager, Eve Rosenbaum is the Orioles’ director of baseball development, and Sara Goodrum was recently hired as the Astros’ director of player development. As for on-field personnel, Alyssa Nakken is a member of the Giants coaching staff, while Bianca Smith (Red Sox) and Rachel Folden (Cubs) have worked coaching jobs in the minor leagues for their respective teams.