Eve Rosenbaum was recently promoted by the Orioles to assistant general manager at a time when it’s still not common for women to hold such a position in sports.
Rosenbaum, 31, prioritizes the team first and foremost, but she has high hopes for the baseball community to become accustomed to women being coaches or having high-level positions.
“What I am hoping for is that this is a big step on the path to this just becoming normalized,” Rosenbaum said on Glenn Clark Radio June 14.
Not many women are in high-ranking positions in the baseball world today. The Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng as baseball’s first-ever female general manager in 2020. The New York Yankees hired Rachel Balkovec to manage Low-A Tampa in 2022, making her the first full-time female manager in the history of the minor leagues. Kelsie Whitmore recently became the first woman to appear in the starting lineup in an Atlantic League game as a pitcher and outfielder for the FerryHawks.
In a larger scale, women are still making a name for themselves in sports. Rosenbaum realized her goal for women in this field when she passed a little league field before an Orioles game in June.
“You know what would be cool? If one day, women were to coach a boys’ little league team and none of the boys were like, ‘Why is this happening? Like, she doesn’t know baseball.’ That’s the goal, I think, is just to have women be able to be involved in baseball,” Rosenbaum said.
Prior to joining the Orioles in 2019 and moving up the ranks, Rosenbaum was with the Houston Astros for five seasons as manager of international scouting. The Bethesda, Md., native is knowledgeable about the sport not just from working in it but from playing, too.
Rosenbaum played baseball growing up and was a walk-on catcher on Harvard University’s softball team for four years (2009-2012). By going through long practices filled with squatting and catching bullpens, Rosenbaum developed a greater sense of team camaraderie and how to help the team as a whole — not just on the field.
Rosenbaum broke into sports while at Harvard as an intern for the Boston Red Sox. She then worked for the National Football League from 2012-2015 and started with the Astros in 2017. While working for the Orioles, Rosenbaum was inducted into the Greater Washington Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in November 2021.
Despite switching from baseball to softball when she was young, Rosenbaum believes that baseball could take a little bit from softball to become more entertaining for the fans.
“[Softball is] fast-paced, there’s a lot of bunts, there’s a lot of running, every ball in the infield is just a bang-bang play at first base,” Rosenbaum said. “I actually think baseball can learn from that.”
Since Rosenbaum grew up playing, watching and being surrounded by avid baseball fans, this sport is almost second nature to her. There wasn’t one moment that made Eve fall in love with baseball, but having two major fans raise her helped in that regard.
“I grew up with baseball in my blood. It comes from my parents. My mom, huge baseball fan, she watches every single Orioles game, and she stays up until the very end,” Rosenbaum said. “… My parents tell me that I learned how to throw a ball before I learned how to walk.”
As for the Orioles, Rosenbaum and her team want what’s best for the players as they come through the farm system. The team wants to ensure that players are ready when they’re called up to the majors mentally, physically, defensively and offensively so they are not overwhelmed.
The Orioles’ priority is to compete in the AL East during the next few years. This turnaround will not be accomplished overnight since the team’s younger players have to become accustomed to playing at the major league level.
“At that point, the team is going to be this young, exciting team that’s really going to be able to compete in the AL East,” Rosenbaum said. “It’s sort of like a trickle right now and soon we’re going to open the faucet and even more players are going to rush out into the majors.”
Rosenbaum said the Orioles look beyond what players bring on the field when identifying what players fit.
“We look at the role of the player on the field, where he plays defensively. We’ll look at the role of the player offensively, how he compares to other guys in our lineup,” Rosenbaum said. “We look at how he fits in with the clubhouse. Is he a leader? Is he setting a good example for the other younger guys on the team? How he works with the coaches, is he changing his swing, how does he deal with adversity, can he bounce back after a few strikeouts or a few bad games?”
For more from Rosenbaum, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles