Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire

The New York Yankees have hired Rachel Balkovec to manage the Tampa Tarpons (Low-A). This makes Balkovec, 34, the first ever woman hired to manage a minor league team.

More than that, Balkovec becomes the first woman to be named manager/head coach of any of the major four sports leagues and their affiliated minor league systems.

For Balkovec, this is just the next natural step in her career.

Balkovec has been a part of player development for a decade. She received her start as the St. Louis Cardinals strength and conditioning coordinator. After serving in that role from 2011 – 2015, the Houston Astros then hired her.

From 2016 – 2018, she was the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator, before becoming the strength and conditioning coach at Double-A Corpus Christi. She would leave the Astros organization to pursue a masters and the Netherlands national baseball and softball teams.

In 2019, she worked at Driveline. The Yankees hired her from there to serve as a minor league hitting coach. She’s now been promoted to be a minor league manager.

For Balkovec, this is merely a step in the process. As she told Stephanie Apstein of Sports Illustrated, she wants to lead a team one day, and she looks upon Miami Marlins GM Kim Ng as one of her inspiration led saying she’s one of the women in baseball who “really impacted my idea of what’s possible for me.”

Right now, Balkovec has shown it’s possible for women to be minor league managers. Likely, she’s going to push the barriers even further in the coming years.