The Top 15 Softball Stories of 2021: #13… Sara Goodrum, the Trailblazing Former Oregon Duck Softball Player, Makes History in the MLB Ranks
By
@BruntjensElla
December 19, 2021
Sara Goodrum became one of the highest-ranking female executives in baseball when she became Director of Player Development for the Houston Astros in early December 2021. Photo: MLB.
We continue our list of the Top 15 Softball Stories of 2021, which will run through December 31st when we’ll present our No. 1 story of the year.
Here are the previous stories (clink on link to read):
Also, on New Year’s Day 2022, we’ll list all 15 of the top stories of the year as well as run 15 more that were considered.
We’ve surveyed the softball community and talked internally as well to come up with what were the most impactful and relevant stories of the year pertaining to the world of fastpitch softball.
Where applicable, we are providing the text to the original articles and/or references when the story first happened.
To provide comments, insights or thoughts, email: [email protected].
*****
Today’s Story of the Year: #13
Breaking Ground: Former Oregon Softball Player Sara Goodrum First Woman Minor League Hitting Coordinator… Latest in Line of “Female Firsts” In Baseball!
When Sara Goodrum joined the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization as a coach in January, she was the latest in a line of former softball players hired to join Major League Baseball clubs in coaching positions. At the same time, though, she made history of her own.
Hired to be the Brewers’ Minor League Hitting Coordinator, she was the first female to hold such a role as she oversaw the team’s hitting program throughout the organization and manage the team’s minor league hitting coaches.
After spending four years in a role at the Brewers’ sport science lab in Arizona, Goodrum was described as an “elite technician of hitting” following the announcement of her hiring.
Formerly an Oregon softball player who was part of a trio of Women’s College World Series appearances during her career, Goodrum quietly made more news earlier this December when it was reported that she will join the Houston Astros’ front office as the Director of Player Development.
In a report discussing her hiring to join the Astros, Goodrum was described as “someone invested in players’ future and skilled at instruction and managing coaches.”
— Justin McLeod, Extra Inning Softball
To provide comments, insights or thoughts, email: [email protected].
*****
Breaking Ground: Former Oregon Softball Player Sara Goodrum First Woman Minor League Hitting Coordinator… Latest in Line of “Female Firsts” In Baseball!
Originally published Jan. 31, 2021 on Extra Inning Softball
Sara Goodrum, hired this week as the Milwaukee Brewers’ Minor League Hitting Coordinator–believed to be the first woman to hold that position in the MLB, played for the Oregon Ducks from 2012 to 2015. Photo: Oregon Softball.
The Milwaukee Brewers announced on Thursday the hiring of 27-year old Sara Goodrum to be the organization’s Minor League Hitting Coordinator.
NBC26 (Green Bay, Wisconsin) ran a segment that day highlighting the ground-breaking hiring:
A 5-foot-8 outfielder, Goodrum played for the Arizona Killer Bees and helped her team finish 7th at PGF Nationals in 2010, the first year of the prestigious event.
She graduated from Red Mountain (Mesa, Arizona) High in 2012 with a 4.0 GPA and would go on to play at the University of Oregon from 2012 to 2015 where she would start 19 games as a freshman for the Ducks but only six after that, serving primarily as a substitute.
Sara at Oregon as a freshman in 2012.
In 25 career games, Goodrum would compile a .319 on-base percentage while only making one error in her time in Eugene. Also, while at the Pac-12 school, the athlete worked as an undergraduate research assistant at the Bowerman Sports Science Clinic.
Goodrum subsequently went to the University of Utah where she received a Master’s Degree in Exercise and Sports Science. In April of 2017, the Pac-12 All-Academic honoree her junior year started with the Brewers as an intern before becoming the MLB team’s Coordinator for Integrative Sports Performance six months later.
According to Adam McCalvy of MLB.com in a piece published Friday on the Brewers’ official MLB site, Goodrum becomes the first woman ever to hold the Minor League Hitting Coordinator job for an MLB organization.
Here are excerpts from McCalvy’s article…
*****
Sara Goodrum Blazes Trail for Brewers
By Adam McCalvy of MLB.com published January 29, 2021
After nearly four years in their sports science department, the Brewers believe Sara Goodrum is ready to make baseball history.
Goodrum started with the Brewers in 2017 as an intern.
The Brewers have named Goodrum, 27, to be their Minor League hitting coordinator, a promotion believed to make her the first woman ever to hold that job for a big league organization.
She will oversee the Brewers’ hitting program throughout the organization, manage the hitting coaches at the team’s affiliates and, when the coronavirus pandemic fades, travel around the system to assist in player instruction.
Since 2017, Goodrum had worked in the Brewers’ Sports Science and Integrative Sports Performance lab at the team’s training facility in Phoenix. Although the Brewers didn’t announce her promotion until Thursday while they completed their player development staff, Goodrum actually has been in her new role since October.
“The most eye-opening thing for me is that especially with the players who are coming up now, they don’t care if you’re a man or a woman,” Goodrum said. “If you can provide them guidance that is going to help them accomplish their dream of making it to the big leagues, they don’t care.
“For me, it’s always been about showing first and foremost that I care about them. I’m going to continue to do that as I go into the role of being a little more on the front face with our players. Showing them, ‘I want to help you guys in your career, and I’ll be able to provide that information.’ Our hitting coaches are phenomenal, as well. I don’t think the players mind what your gender is. It’s about the information.”
Goodrum ranks among the women who are breaking baseball’s glass ceiling in the coaching ranks.
She joins:
Alyssa Nakken, an assistant coach on the Giants’ Major League staff,
Rachel Folden, a hitting coach for the Cubs’ Arizona League affiliate,
Rachel Balkovec, the hitting coach for the Yankees’ Gulf Coast League affiliate,
Bianca Smith, who recently left Carroll University in Waukesha, Wis. to be a hitting coach in the Red Sox’s Minor League system.
Women also have been breaking barriers in baseball’s front offices, most notably with Kim Ng’s ascension to general manager for the Miami Marlins (November 13, 2020), making her the first female GM in the history of the four major North American professional sports leagues.
Two weeks later, the Orioles hired Eve Rosenbaum to the newly created role of director of baseball development to coordinate between Baltimore’s scouting, player development and analytics departments.
Kim Ng, the first woman GM in Major League Baseball, reached out to Goodrum on Friday to congratulate her.
“I think it’s tremendous that [Goodrum] got promoted within the Milwaukee organization,” Ng said on Friday.
“I actually reached out to her earlier today just to congratulate her, to give her a heartfelt congratulation on her ascension to that position. I think it’s great for the organization, for Milwaukee. I think it’s great for baseball to put another woman in a more visible position for others to see.”
Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said:
“We’ve seen it work for almost four years with Sara in our organization working very closely with our players and our coaches. I think we’ve seen that because of her talent and her skill set, she is trusted and respected. We would anticipate that continuing in this new position.”
Added Brewers farm director Tom Flanagan:
“I think [gender] is really a non-issue, where we’re at today in the game. Specifically, with [Goodrum], there is a familiarity with our hitters. She has been around the batting cage for the last couple of years, so there are relationships there, there’s knowledge of what we’re trying to do and what she’s trying to do. I think it’s kind of a natural progression for her.”
Goodrum’s official job title is coordinator-hitting development initiatives. She played Division I softball at the University of Oregon before getting a master’s degree in exercise and sports science from the University of Utah.
Goodrum is a lifelong baseball fan who always knew she wanted to work in sports, but she wasn’t drawn specifically to player development until after she saw those officials at work after joining the Brewers as a sports science intern in April 2017. She said she began to think more about the ways in which hitting a softball and hitting a baseball are similar, starting with a sound mental approach while a hitter is alone in the batter’s box.
Goodrum said she has not yet reflected on the historic nature of her promotion because she has been too focused on the work.
“I was just like, ‘OK, let’s go. This is going to be awesome. I get to think about hitting,’” Goodrum said. “There were some people that were kind of like, ‘This is new and maybe groundbreaking in the space.’ I didn’t really think about it at first. It took me a little bit to process.
“When I really started to process it was when Kim Ng got hired. For me, personally, that hire really showed me somebody who I could finally, really, truly look up to. Someone who has made it to a pinnacle position in a Major League organization. It took me a moment to be, like, people could look at me like that. I think it motivated me more than anything to continue to want to make a positive impact in baseball and continue to push the needle forward in making the Brewers’ player development unique.”
On Twitter, Brewers Director of Player Development Initiatives Jake McKinley lauded the move.
“Great news for us, and great news for Sara!” McKinley wrote. “She is an elite technician of hitting, has great feel for people and is an awesome human being.”
Great news for us, and great news for Sara! She is an elite technician of hitting, has great feel for people, and is an awesome human being. https://t.co/9Zbyug7mB1
