Mets hire Elizabeth Benn as director of Major League ops

NEW YORK — Amid a changing landscape across baseball, the Mets have made an historic hire by bringing on Elizabeth Benn to be their director of Major League operations. Benn becomes the highest-ranking woman baseball ops employee in franchise history.

An MLB employee since 2017, Benn worked for the league front office in youth programs, labor relations and, since 2020, in baseball operations. She is a University of Toronto and Columbia University graduate and an avid baseball player; since 2016, Benn has pitched in the New York City Metro Baseball League. She is the first woman to play in the NYCMBL.

Benn has also served as an adjunct lecturer at Lehman College for the past six years. In Queens, she will join a baseball operations hierarchy that includes general manager Billy Eppler as well as assistant GMs Bryn Alderson, Ian Levin and Ben Zauzmer.

While the Mets employ several women in their baseball ops department, Benn’s hire makes her the highest-ranking among them. As such, she is part of a greater women’s movement across Major League Baseball.

In November 2020, Kim Ng became the first female GM in MLB history when she joined the Marlins front office, shattering the so-called “glass ceiling” of baseball ops departments throughout the league. When the Mets sought a GM this past offseason, they reportedly pursued longtime Yankees assistant GM Jean Afterman and requested permission to interview Red Sox assistant GM Raquel Ferreira.

“We might not see many women in front offices right now,” Benn said in a 2019 profile in The Athletic, “[but] I think that’s going to continue to grow.”

In addition to Benn, the Mets recently hired Gretchen Aucoin, the first on-field female coach in franchise history, to a Minor League role. She follows in the footsteps of the Giants’ Alyssa Nakken, the first full-time female coach in Major League history, and the Yankees’ Rachel Balkovec, who recently became the first woman to manage a Major League-affiliated team.