The New York Mets have reportedly hired Elizabeth Benn as their director of Major League operations, according to MLB.com's Anthony DiComo.
Benn had previously served as the senior coordinator of baseball operations for Major League Baseball itself. She will become the highest ranking woman to work in the baseball operations department in Mets history, per DiComo.
Benn was profiled by Rustin Dodd of The Athletic as part of the publication's "35 under 35" series in 2019. At the time, she was splitting her energy between her post in the league office and pitching as part of the New York Metro Baseball League. Here's how Dodd described her at the time:
At first, Benn sought to take the response in stride. At age 25, she is many things — the first woman to play in the NYMBL, a coordinator in the labor relations department at the MLB commissioner's office, an adjunct lecturer in philosophy at Lehman College — but one thing she is not is timid. When she was a little girl in Toronto, she joined a local Little League and played baseball with boys. When she arrived in New York for graduate school, she did a Google search for "adult baseball leagues." When she earned her master's in philosophy from Columbia University in 2017, she entered a presentation into the Baseball Hall of Fame's annual symposium, "Baseball and American Culture."
Benn had worked for the league office in some form or another since joining as an intern in 2017. She had filled a wide-ranging coordinator role (of labor relations, diversity and inclusion, and baseball development) until being promoted into her senior coordinator position in 2020. She had also served as an adjunct lecturer at Lehman College.
Benn's appointment is the latest in a busy offseason for the Mets as it pertains to their leadership and their roster. In addition to installing new faces at both general manager (Billy Eppler) and manager (Buck Showalter), the Mets signed Max Scherzer, Starling Marte, and Mark Canha ahead of the owner-imposed lockout.
