Katie Krall knew she wanted to get back into baseball. But she never expected it to come the way it did.
Krall had been working her way up in the baseball world, most recently with the Cincinnati Reds as a baseball operations analyst for nearly two years. But in November, she accepted an offer she couldn’t turn down, joining Google on their global strategy team.
The idea, she said, was to take some lessons from Google and big technology and apply it back to baseball. In her words, it was a career detour, not a complete shift.
“But I did miss baseball a great deal,” Krall said.
She just didn’t anticipate returning so quickly. Or the kind of opportunity that was about to come.
In early November, Chris Stasio, the Red Sox’ manager of baseball development, had reached out to her about a new role that the organization wanted to implement at all of their minor league affiliates that would blend integrating data with on-field coaching. Krall, with no prior coaching experience, was initially intrigued but also unsure.
“I was even candid with Chris and I said, ‘Do you genuinely think that someone like me could be a candidate for this role?’” Krall said. “I said, ‘Just give it to me straight.’ And he said, ‘Yes. With the way that we want to really leverage the information we have in the front office and to bring it to the field, let’s have you talk to some more folks and let’s see if there’s a fit on both sides.’”
Ultimately, it was. Earlier this month, Krall was officially hired as a player development coach at Double-A Portland, a job that tasks her with integrating technology and data into advance scouting, in-game strategy and player plans to improve performance, as well as working collaboratively with the baseball analytics and sports science departments.
For Krall, it was the right job for her, even if it forced her to leave her post at Google after a shorter-than-expected time.
“I think my memoir someday is gonna be, ‘Two Months At Google: My Life In Baseball,’” Krall joked.
“It appealed to me for a number of reasons. I think being with a franchise like Boston that has put such an emphasis on building that sustainable pipeline of talent, it seemed like the confluence of a lot of different factors that I felt with my background in front offices, would lend very well to.”
Krall’s hiring made notable history, too. She joined Bianca Smith — who was hired last year by the Red Sox as the first Black woman to serve as a coach in professional baseball — on the team’s minor league coaching staff, making the Red Sox the first organization to have two women on their coaching staff.
That isn’t lost on Krall, who is cognizant of the challenges women have and continue to face as they break into a male-dominated field. She recognizes that the cultural shift is taking place — as evidenced by her and Smith’s hirings, as well as Rachel Balkovec’s history-making hiring earlier this month as the first female manager ever in affiliated professional baseball — but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of work still to do. Her hiring, though, is another huge step.
“There definitely have been people who are not receptive to having women in baseball,” Krall said. “(The) cultural paradigm shifting, it definitely has, but that does not mean that there is not still misogyny, there isn’t still sexism. I think when you do meet those people who discard you simply because of your gender or for those who have encountered racism in the game, I think it can be difficult. But you just have to stay true to yourself and … find those mentors and find those champions. I think it was 2019 that Pete Alonso had a great quote in Sports Illustrated that he was there to prove his believers right, not prove his doubters wrong. I’ve tried to have that mentality, too.”
This week, Krall is getting her first experience coaching with the Red Sox down in Fort Myers at the team’s “Winter Warm-Up” program — “spring training for spring training,” she described it — as she works with a 28-man group of prospects. She’s getting the opportunity to work 1-on-1 with players, which she said has been “phenomenal” as they dissect hitting and pitching philosophies.
Krall said communication has been a crucial element of her transition as she learns how to coach in the trenches for the first time.
“It’s not necessarily looking at large data sets and having a eureka moment,” Krall said. “I think the information that I’m looking at is pretty comparable to what we had in Cincinnati. It’s what the other 29 teams have. It’s moreso, how do we then translate it? And so I think being a woman and being able to maybe have a different approach with the way that I transmit information, being very cognizant of how I individualize when I speak to different players because each guy is different and probably responds to different stimuli in his own way.”
Krall won’t be the last woman on a coaching staff in baseball, and she understands why it’s a big deal for her to be one right now. It will certainly take time, but she’s looking forward to the day when it isn’t.
“I definitely think that at a point, we will get to a place where women will just be hired,” she said. “It won’t necessarily result in a Zoom call with reporters. I think that would be phenomenal. I guess that would be the ultimate goal. That it doesn’t become newsworthy anymore.”
Krall had a message for young women and girls who aspire to work in baseball someday: Always be ready.
“The mantra I’ve always tried to embrace is spend your life studying for pop quizzes, because you don’t know at what point you are going to get that chance to really leave your mark and when you have that window of opportunity, I think women need to be ready and prepared,” Krall said. “And then again, really being proactive in identifying where your passion is and not being discouraged if someone says well, it’s not your time, it’s not your place. If that’s their idea, then make your own space.”
