Red Sox Hire Bianca Smith, First Black Woman To Coach In MLB

BOSTON — Just two months after Major League Baseball welcomed its first woman to serve as general manager, the Boston Red Sox announced the hiring of the first Black woman to serve as a coach.

Bianca Smith, who currently works as the hitting coach for the Carroll (Wisconsin) University baseball team, will join the Red Sox as a minor league coach, the team announced. Smith previously interned with the Texas Rangers and worked as a trainee within the Cincinnati Reds’ baseball operations department. She will join the Red Sox after she completes her work training athletes at Carroll, Smith told the MLB Network on Monday.

“I think it’s a great opportunity also to just kind of inspire other women that are interested in the game,” Smith said in the interview. “This is not something I thought about when I was younger. I just kind of fell into being an athlete. So I’m excited to get that chance to show what I can do.”

The Red Sox announced Smith will work at the team's player development facility in Fort Myers, Florida, and will work mainly with position players. Smith, 29, told the MLB Network that part of her previous training has been to learn about how bodies work and how specific training drills cater to each player’s body.

Smith said in the interview that she hasn’t yet wrapped her head completely about her new position with the Red Sox. In a tweet on Tuesday, Smith expressed gratitude for the support she has received since the Red Sox announced the move.

"Of course none of this would be possible without the help of my family, friends, and the trailblazers who came before me," Smith wrote in the post. "I can’t wait to get started. Thank you so much and go Red Sox!!"

Smith joins Alyssa Nakken, who was hired as an assistant coach for the San Francisco Giants last year and became the first woman to serve as a coach in the MLB.

In November, Kim Ng was named general manager of the Miami Marlins after she worked for the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. Ng is the first woman and first East Asian American to ever hold a general manager’s role in professional baseball.

Smith worked as the director of baseball operations department at Case Western University in Cleveland and also worked at the University of Dallas. She played softball at Dartmouth College, where she graduated in 2012.

“The number of different resources that the Red Sox have as far as tech goes, I’m really excited to get my hands on that and learning the different metrics and being able to dive deeper into what I currently have is pretty exciting," Smith told the MLB Network on Monday.