A former standout baseball player from Oregon has been hired to manage the Texas Rangers’ Triple-A minor league team.
The Rangers announced Thursday that Darwin Barney would lead the Nashville Sounds in the Pacific Coast League.
It will be his first professional coaching role, according to the Rangers.
Barney, 34, was a star player for Southridge High School in the Beaverton School District. Before he was a Skyhawk, he played for Murrayhill Little League.
Barney would find success on a national level at Oregon State University. He was part of OSU’s NCAA Division I baseball championship teams in 2006 and 2007.
Barney debuted in the majors for the Chicago Cubs in 2010, won the Gold Glove award in 2012, and also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays.
He was a non-roster invitee by the Rangers to spring training in 2018, but he was released in March of that year. In all, the local star saw action in 814 MLB games over an eight-year career.
In October 2018, Barney signed on as an advisor and investor for the Portland Diamond Project, the group working to bring Major League Baseball to Portland.
Barney told FOX 12 last year that the Portland Diamond Project was in a “good position” to bring a team to the Rose City.
“Nothing would be better than to have a team in your backyard and to have any hand in that, any type of play in that, a big sense of pride comes because this is our home,” Barney said.
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