Via The Athletic, a report that Rachel Balkovec, Yankees’ pioneering manager, will leave to run Marlins’ player development:

Rachel Balkovec, the first woman to manage in affiliated baseball, has left the New York Yankees for an even bigger task — leading the Miami Marlins’ minor-league player development, according to a league source.

Balkovec, 36, had been the Yankees’ Low-A manager for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, guiding some of the organization’s brightest prospects, including Jasson Domínguez, with whom she had an especially close relationship. Domínguez reached the majors last year at age 20. Balkovec went 122-136 with a .473 winning percentage.

“The best person on the job was Rachel. It’s a credit to her,” general manager Brian Cashman told The Athletic in 2022.

The Yankees hired Balkovec as a minor-league hitting coach in November 2019. She had previously worked with the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals in strength and conditioning.

Balkovec was a softball catcher at Creighton University and the University of New Mexico, graduating with a degree in exercise science.

She joins the Marlins as the club undergoes changes in its front office. GM Kim Ng departed after owner Bruce Sherman planned to hire a president of baseball operations to work as her boss. Ultimately, the team hired Peter Bendix from the Tampa Bay Rays to fill the role of president. The team had let go of Geoff DeGroot as its director of player development in September 2022, and the position was vacant until Balkovec’s hire.

In an Instagram post in July 2022, Balkovec referred to Ng as one of the “OG QUEENS of the modern era of baseball.” In that group, she also included Yankees assistant general manager Jean Afterman and Raquel Ferreira, the executive vice president and assistant general manager of the Boston Red Sox.

“The players that I’ve worked with,” Balkovec told The Athletic in 2022, “whether they like me or they don’t like me, they like what I’m saying or they don’t like what I’m saying — I do feel like they respect me. At the very least, they know that I’m passionate, hard working and then I know what I’m talking about. Whether they like it or not is a different story. But every coach goes through that.”