PORT ST. LUCIE — There still has been only one female on-field coach in major league history.
Rachel Folden isn’t positive she’s looking to be next, but she knows she wants to make a difference in the game.
And her next stop is with the Mets, as the 39-year-old was hired this offseason to be the organization’s Double-A hitting coach at Binghamton.
The move comes after Folden spent the previous six seasons in the Cubs organization.
Folden got her first job with Chicago in November 2019, the same month Rachel Balkovec was hired by the Yankees to be a roving minor league hitting coach.
At the time, Folden was the lead hitting lab technician, as well as a coach for the Rookie-level Arizona League Cubs.
She worked her way up to become the hitting coach for Chicago’s Triple-A Iowa affiliate before her contract was up and she headed to the Mets.
“It was a good fit,’’ Folden said. “Six years with an organization is a long time and when my contract ended, I thought it was time to try a new organization. I’ve been told you don’t really learn in baseball until you’ve worked for another organization and I’m finding that out already.”
The Mets have had other female coaches in the minors — including Gretchen Aucoin and Bree Nasti, who were both in uniform — but Alyssa Nakken, a major league coach with the Giants from 2020-24, is still the only woman to have an on-field coaching job in the majors.
“I don’t know if getting to the majors is my ultimate goal,” Folden said. “If a big league job came calling, I don’t think I’d turn it down. But I just really love working in baseball and am very passionate about working in the minor leagues. I really do enjoy it. I just like making players better, whatever level that’s at.”
Folden was a star catcher in college at Marshall and played some professional softball before getting into coaching baseball.
“I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like it, to be honest,” Folden said. “I love coaching and once I got into the atmosphere of baseball, I just really enjoyed it. I love coaching full-time and there are very few positions [in college] where you can do that and not have to recruit at the same time.”
She’s already made an impression on some of the younger Mets players.
“We see eye-to-eye on hitting,” top outfield prospect A.J. Ewing said. “We’ve talked about approach and she’s a good communicator.”
And since players like Ewing have already worked with female coaches in the Mets system, there’s not even an adjustment.
“She’s just a coach who’s trying to make us better,” Ewing said.
And that’s why Folden believes she’s been accepted wherever she’s gone.
“If a player thinks you can help them, it doesn’t matter who you are,” Folden said. “They just want to be helped. It just becomes about building relationships, building trust. All of those things are pretty genderless and then everything comes together quickly.”
The bigger adjustments can come from above.
“With staff members and the organization, there’s always a level of skepticism whenever a woman is hired into a male-dominated field — and for good reason, I think,’’ said Folden, who credits Balkovec — now the director of player development for the Marlins — for breaking down barriers in the sport. “Inherently, they want to make sure it’s a comfortable environment for us and also a comfortable environment for the players.”
David Stearns, Mets president of baseball operations, hired Folden not to make a statement, but because “I think she’s a good coach.”
Folden came recommended by Andy Green, the Mets senior vice president of player development, who worked with Folden in Chicago.
“I do think women throughout baseball at different positions are becoming more commonplace,” Stearns said. “I think we’re eager to get to the point where having an on-field woman coach is not a story. I recognize it is one right now. But she’s impacted hitters throughout her career and earned the position. Players respect knowledgeable coaches and that’s what she is.”
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