Sara Goodrum oversees hitting in the batting cages during spring training. Photo from @Brewers.
The warm Phoenix sun shines down on Garrett Mitchell as he steps into the batter’s box.
The former UCLA star squints, takes in the positioning of the outfielders, and locks in on the man on the mound sixty feet and six inches in front of him.
There’s a soft thud as the pitcher tosses the ball into his worn leather glove. There’s already a thorough scouting report on Mitchell, the Milwaukee Brewers’ first-round pick in the 2020 Major League Baseball Draft and one of the franchise’s top minor league prospects: The left-hander makes solid contact and routinely puts the ball in play. Don’t give him anything to hit because once he gets on base you’re in trouble.
Behind Mitchell, the catcher flashes a sign, calling for a specific pitch. The pitcher shakes the call off. The catcher flashes another sign, suggesting a different pitch. The pitcher nods, rears back, then strides into the pitch.
A split second later the ball flies past the third baseman and lands inside the left-field line for a base hit. Before the pitcher has even turned around to see where the ball went, Mitchell has rounded first base and is on his way to second.
Just like Sara Goodrum, BS ’15 (human physiology), the Milwaukee Brewers’ coordinator of hitting development initiatives, planned it.
The name Sara Goodrum is familiar to UO softball fans: the former outfielder opened her collegiate career in 2012 with hits in each of her first three games, and drove in a pair of runs against No. 1 California in the Women’s College World Series later that year. While her career as a Duck did not pan out as she may have hoped—her 113 appearances includes just 25 starts and 99 at bats—she was reliable when called upon, earning a .467 on-base percentage as a junior and not registering an error in the field over her final three seasons.
Sara Goodrum high fives teammate Janie Takeda, BS '15 (journalism) during a game against Utah Valley. Photo by Eric Evans.
But the name Sara Goodrum is also about to become very familiar to MLB fans, especially fans of the Milwaukee Brewers. On January 29, the Brewers announced they were naming Goodrum their new minor league hitting coordinator, making her what is believed to be the first-ever woman to hold that title for a major league franchise.
“When I officially was given the position, that didn't really cross my mind initially,” said Goodrum. “I was really excited to just get to work, because I'm really passionate about hitting and helping our players become the best versions of themselves. It took me a little bit of time to process the significance of the hire and what it meant for the future, for women and girls who are growing up to see myself in this position and what it could mean for them, and how it could potentially help younger women pursue roles that are like this.”
Goodrum, a Mesa, Arizona, native, wanted to go out of state to attend college, and was interested in learning more about how the human body works. An honor roll student and a member of a top-10 Premier Girls Fastpitch softball team, she wanted to be pushed equally hard academically and athletically.
“I set my sights high and wanted to be a Duck,” said Goodrum. “I went on multiple visits to multiple schools and hadn’t really experienced the Northwest much, but I fell in love with it while visiting the UO campus, so it was just a natural fit.”
When Goodrum wasn’t running the bases as a Duck she was in the Bowerman Sports Science Clinic, helping Oregon Track Club Elite’s Olympic hopefuls improve their performance while also helping her peers with their research.
“I got a lot of hands-on research experience, which at the time I was really craving because I was learning all this new stuff through my classes and then I was actually able to see how some of that could be applied in the research world,” said Goodrum.
“She was one of those people who would show up to pretty much every data collection that we had with those athletes, and assisted with running the protocols, keeping the treadmill speeds and pitches the right amounts, and monitoring their values that came off the Vo2 collection system,” said Mike Hahn, associate professor of human physiology and director of the Bowerman clinic. “She understood the athlete mindset, so she could talk directly to the athletes and the coach about why this work was important, and what the data was going to be used for.”
Sara Goodrum with Milwaukee Brewers special assistant for player development Quinton McCracken during spring training. Photo courtesy Scott Paulus/Milwaukee Brewers.
Hahn worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Seattle before heading south to Eugene. Seeing military veterans struggle to move in prosthetics that did not adapt well to stairs or ramps inspired him to create something better, and the quest for a more responsive prosthetic has been part of the research conducted at the Bowerman clinic since his arrival.
Bryson Nakamura, MS ’14 (human physiology), PhD ’16 (human physiology) worked with Hahn on the research during his time at the UO, and was assisted by Goodrum—in whom he found not just a talented fellow researcher, but someone he could talk baseball with.
“There were side conversations that would pick up after data collections; we’d spend some extra time just talking about throwing, talking about hitting, what does this look like, what do we see are gaps,” said Nakamura. “It was a hobby, from a scientist perspective. ‘I wonder what exists from the research in this area?’ We would just talk about those kinds of things.”
After earning his PhD, Nakamura went to work for the Milwaukee Brewers as a medical operations intern and then as a medical and performance coordinator. Meanwhile, Goodrum earned her bachelor’s degree and began pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Utah. The two stayed in touch, and when an internship in the Brewers’ Integrative Sports Performance Lab came open, Nakamura encouraged Goodrum to apply.
“I thought Sara would be a great fit here, to help build what is now the Integrative Sports Performance department here for the Brewers,” said Nakamura, who is now the team’s director of player performance. “Sara was well deserving of it. Nothing was given to her by any means, she earned the internship here. But, with her character, her humility, her passion, her insight, and her scientific rigor, I thought she would be a great fit here, and she really came in and helped me build the foundations of what is now our Integrative Sports Performance department.
Goodman interned with the Brewers’ during the 2017 season, then became the team’s coordinator of integrative sports performance at the end of the year. She served in that capacity for three years, before being promoted to coordinator of hitting development initiatives in October 2020. By the time the team announced her promotion publicly in January, she had already been making history for several months.
While the historic nature of her hire was initially lost on Goodrum, another MLB first drove home the importance of what she was doing. In November 2020, the Miami Marlins hired Kim Ng to be the team’s general manager. Ng, a former Los Angeles Dodgers vice president, former MLB senior vice president of baseball operations and, like Goodrum, a former NCAA softball player, is the first-ever female to hold a general manager position in one of North America’s four major sports leagues, and called Goodrum’s promotion “great for baseball.”
“What really, really hit home was when Kim Ng got hired by the Marlins to become the first female general manager in baseball or in any major sport,” said Goodrum. “I sat back and realized that the sky was the limit for myself, because I saw Kim get to the highest level in baseball. And it just made me believe that if I wanted to go to that position that I finally had someone that I could look up to and lead the way for myself. Then it made me realize that I’m in a similar position as well.”
Sara Goodrum's official Milwaukee Brewers team photo.
In minor league baseball wins and championships are a goal, but are not necessarily the goal: they can be secondary to the job of preparing players for promotion to the next level. In her new position, Goodrum will spend her spring and summer on the road, ensuring the Brewers minor league players—those playing for the Nashville Sounds, Biloxi Shuckers, Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, Carolina Mudcats, AZL Brewers Blue, AZL Brewers Gold, and DSL Brewers—are hitting the way the franchise wants them to hit, so that if they get called up to the Milwaukee Brewers they’ll be better prepared to fit into manager Craig Counsell’s system.
“What my current job duties entail is I oversee our entire minor league hitting apparatus,” Goodrum said. “I oversee all of our minor league hitting coaches, from our hitting coaches down in the Dominican Republic who are working with international players, ranging from 16 to 18-year-olds, all the way up into our Triple A affiliate, who are guys that are bouncing up and down from the big leagues or are just on the brink of making their debut. The biggest thing with that is just implementing a hitting system and philosophy that aligns with the organization’s beliefs and how we go about developing players.”
The reaction from the Brewers players has been overwhelmingly positive. Contrary to what sports talk radio or television show hosts might think about the role of women in men’s sports, the players themselves are pragmatic: they want to get better at what they do, and as long as the person helping them knows what they’re talking about, that’s all that matters.
The team’s director of player development initiatives, Jake McKinley, tweeted that Goodrum is an “elite tactician of hitting,” while Mitchell himself told the Athletic, “For me, the biggest thing is I know—usually—what I’m feeling, why I feel it and why it’s wrong. But I like to ask questions. I want to know that what I’m feeling is what they see. And she’s spot on. Every time.” Nakamura said he was ecstatic when he found out about Goodrum’s promotion, and added, “I was sad for me, because I’m losing someone I truly trusted and valued inside of my department, but I think this is great for the organization, great for baseball in general, and just knowing her on both a personal and professional level I’m excited for her and think that she is going to do a tremendous job.”
“I think players are, honestly, they’re just searching for people who are willing to help and care for them and provide them with good information too,” said Goodrum. “They don't really care about the gender so I haven’t had any negativity about that. They’ve been super open-minded, I mean, everyone in this organization has always been open-minded and receptive to myself so I’m really thankful to be a part of such a great organization that provides that environment.”
- Damian Foley, UO Communications