TAMPA, Fla. — The next glass ceiling will have to wait. Rachel Balkovec, who will become the first woman to manage an affiliated baseball team, was injured in a hitting drill on Tuesday and will not be in the dugout on Thursday when her team plays its first spring training game.
Balkovec, named the manager of the low Class-A Tampa Tarpons, was hit in the face with a batted ball during hitting drills at the indoor cages at the minor league complex. She experienced swelling and the initial diagnosis does not include a concussion.
“All things considered, I feel very fortunate,” Balkovec said. “The doctors have asked me to be smart about limiting my activities over the next several days, and I plan on following their guidance. As much as I already miss being around the players and staff, I do not anticipate this affecting my role and responsibilities for the regular season.”
Balkovec is scheduled to make history on April 8 when the Tarpons open the season at Lakeland. She has already crashed through several glass ceilings.
Balkovec joined the Yankees organization in November 2019 as a minor league hitting coach, becoming the first woman to be named to that role in the history of professional baseball. She was followed a few days later by Rachel Folden of the Chicago Cubs organization and there will be 19 women in uniform this season in baseball.
Prior to joining the Yankees, Balkovec spent three seasons with the Houston Astros organization, serving as the strength and conditioning coach for Double-A Corpus Christi in 2018 and the Rookie-level GCL Astros in 2017. She also worked as the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator from 2016-17. Prior to that, she was the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2014-15.
Balkovec was also the first woman to be hired as a full-time strength and conditioning coach in affiliated baseball.
Second chances
The Yankees, like most teams, are concerned about having enough pitching this year. With a lockout-shortened spring training, the concerns about having pitchers ready in time has led to the union and owners agreeing to have two extra roster spots through the month of April.
Wednesday night, Deivi Garcia got a chance to try and change his narrative and earn one of those spots. The young right-hander, who two years ago was considered one of the Yankees’ top prospects, struggled since he burst into the big leagues during the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season.
Garcia made just two starts in the big leagues last season and got through just 8 1/3 innings.
“I think when you’re young and talented and you have a lot of success, the game has a way of humbling you at different times,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It can come in at different times, in different ways at different points in your career. And I think when you have the talent behind it you can have the ability to learn and adjust. That can be powerful.”
The ghost returns
Boone said he is OK with the union and owners agreeing to use the “ghost runner,” or man on second base to start extra innings, because it cuts down on the wear and tear of extremely long games.
“I think I’m on board with it,” Boone said. “I think in the end, I think you can better preserve players and for player safety. And you were unfairly demoting guys at times because you just get in such a bind. If you’re in the middle of a long, long stretch of games, you run into a 17-inning game and you get up against it. You start worrying about guys getting injured unnecessarily.”
He is also a fan of returning to nine-inning games for doubleheaders. They had used seven-inning doubleheaders the last two years.
