'Just call me Rae': Rachel Balkovec hired to lead Miami Marlins farm system

After making history as the first woman to manage a minor league team, Rachel Balkovec will part ways with the Tampa Tarpons, Single-A affiliate of the New York Yankees, to work in player development for the Miami Marlins. In this role, Balkovec will oversee more than 100 players, as well as dozens of individuals in coaching and managerial roles.

Balkovec, who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, has spent more than a decade in organized baseball, but not without navigating several hurdles to get there.

After playing softball, basketball and soccer in high school, she went on to play Division I softball as a catcher for the Creighton Blue Jays and later the New Mexico Lobos. Following that, she earned her master’s in exercise science.

Rachel Balkovec forged her path in baseball to new role with Marlins

The Cardinals hired her in 2012 on a temporary contract as the strength and conditioning coach for the Johnson City Cardinals, a former Rookie-level affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, where she won the Appalachian League's award for strength coach of the year. And even so, she couldn’t get a call back on a job application after her tenure in Johnson City.

At the time, she had relocated to Phoenix where there were about 15 low-level minor league teams. Balkovec was waiting tables and working in retail to make ends meet, with the goal of advancing her career in baseball, but after applying to several different teams and not hearing back, she was forced to find a loophole.

After her sister suggested camouflaging her gender on her application materials, she thought maybe if she changed her name on her resume and her email address from "Rachel" to "Rae" and removed the word “softball” from Division I college softball catcher to Division I college catcher, that maybe she would gain some traction.

… and she was right.

She started getting return calls, but as soon as they heard a woman’s voice on the other end, she was once again turned away.

One team even went so far as to call her up and basically tell her the job was hers pending some paperwork on their end, and as the process got underway, she heard crickets for the next several weeks. When she finally got a call back from the team’s coordinator, Balkovec told radio host Alex Schroeder,

"He said, 'You know, I'd really like to hire you, but I'm not going to be able to. And it's because of your gender.'"

Still, she persisted.

Balkovec went to great lengths to be seen, learning the Spanish language to position herself for a position in Latin player development. Additionally, she spent nearly two years in the Netherlands earning an additional master’s degree and researching human movement science and eye-tracking for batters, which would further her credentials in baseball analytics.

After spending time in the Cardinals and Astros organizations, she joined the Yankees organization as a minor league hitting coach in 2019 and was later promoted within the Yankees organization as the first female minor league manager.

Balkovec joins the Marlins organization in the midst of a front office shake-up. Geoff DeGroot was released as the director of player development in September 2022, and the position remained open until Balkovec's appointment. Peter Bendix of the Tampa Bay Rays joined the organization as its new GM in Kim Ng’s stead.