Giants Add Alyssa Nakken to Coaching Staff in Historic Hire

Alyssa Nakken is believed to be the first female coach in Major League Baseball.

The Giants have completed their hiring process for manager Gabe Kapler's staff and added Alyssa Nakken in a historic hire. 

The club announced Thursday that Nakken and Mark Hallberg are joining the Giants as major league assistant coaches, giving San Francisco 13 coaches overall. 

Nakken is the first female coach in Giants history and believed to be the first female coach in MLB.

"Alyssa and Mark are highly respected members of the organization and I'm delighted that they will now focus their talents on helping to build a winning culture in the clubhouse," Kapler said in a statement. "In addition to assisting the rest of the coaching staff on the field, Mark and Alyssa will focus on fostering a clubhouse culture that promotes high performance through, among other attributes, a deep sense of collaboration and team."

Nakken was a four-time Academic All American softball player for Sacramento State. After graduating in 2012, she worked for the University of San Francisco baseball team. Nakken joined the Giants as a baseball operations intern in 2014 and earned her Master’s Degree in sport management from the University of San Francisco in 2015. Before accepting a role on Kapler's staff, she was responsible for developing, producing and directing a number of the Giants' health and wellness initiatives.

Several other MLB teams have hired women in recent years, including the A's bringing on Justine Siegal as a guest instructor for the club’s 2015 instructional league team. Siegal was also the first woman to throw batting practice for a major league team.

The Mets hired Jessica Mendoza as a baseball operations adviser ahead of the 2019 season, and the Yankees hired Rachel Balkovec as a minor league hitting coach this offseason.

Hallberg worked for the past two seasons with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes in the Giants' farm system. He served as a fundamentals coach in 2018 and the team's manager in 2019.