It’s to be expected. When a player joins a new team, especially one in contention for a playoff berth, he’s going to tell you that he’s happy to be with his new team. Heck, he might even tell you this if he’s traded to a non-contending team. I mean, what else is he going to say, ‘I don’t want to be here?’ But with Darwin Barney, who was acquired by the Dodgers from the last place Chicago Cubs prior to the July 31 trade deadline, you get the sense that he’s not just toeing the company line but is truly happy to be a Dodger – very happy, in fact.

“When the Cubs told me what was going to happen they told me there was a reason,” said Barney. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough, it was more that they needed to move these guys along and they thought a designation [for assignment] would make a trade happen a lot sooner, and they thought that would be better for me and where I would end up along the timeline.”

Darwin Barney showed why he won a Gold Glove last season when he made a brilliant catch of a pop fly while on a dead run… backwards.
(Photo credit – Brett Davis)

Barney admits that coming off of a Gold Glove season as the Cubs everyday second baseman in 2012 to being designated for assignment less than a year later was difficult for him.

“Obviously that was hard, but being able to be part of this organization is exciting,” said the extremely likable 28-year-old Portland, OR native. “Obviously there’s a lot of fun guys here, a lot of different personalities and it’s refreshing to be in an atmosphere that’s all about winning, so it’s been a lot of fun.”

It’s easy to expect some sour grapes when a player is traded from one team to another, especially after being designated for assignment, but Barney understands that baseball is a business and he took the high road about his former team.

“Chicago was always a little different,” said Barney. “When I first got there we were coming off a few winning seasons and then from there things just didn’t work out. Once you get into the rebuilding mode it is what it is, it’s rebuilding mode. Obviously I was happy to be a Cub, I’m going to miss my time there, but it’s a breath of fresh air to go out and be claimed and winning a game and not worry about your status.”

But with Dee Gordon firmly entrenched as the Dodgers everyday second baseman, where does this leave Barney, who was absolutely brilliant in his Dodgers debut last week in Atlanta?

“Dee’s our second baseman,” said Dodgers manager Don Mattingly emphatically. “He’s hit left-handers, he’s hitting close to .300 with lefties and doing a good job with those guys. That being said we’ll make sure we keep Dee rested. I think we did a pretty good job so far, he’s been healthy, try to keep him rested. He showed yesterday (against Atlanta) just how important he is to our club. But Darwin will get some at bats, he’ll probably see some time at short and we’ll see how that goes. So we don’t really have a true plan of saying that every time we see a lefty comes up that he’s going to play and Dee’s not.”

Although it is way too premature to even think about who will be on the Dodgers potential playoff roster and who will not, the acquisition of Barney creates some interesting difficulties (if you will) for Ned Colletti and the Dodgers. With Hanley Ramirez likely to return to the Dodgers line-up before the end of the regular season and with his replacement Miguel Rojas playing exceptionally well in his stead, and with Justin Turner being at or near the top offensively among the Dodgers utility bench players (not to mention Scott Van Slyke), where does this leave Darwin Barney in the grand scheme of things? As it stands, Rojas and Van Slyke are the only two among that group who still have options, but do the Dodgers really want to exclude Rojas’s stellar glove and Van Slyke’s power bat (especially against lefties) from the playoff roster? Probably not. Again, it is way too premature to give much thought to this right now but at some point in the next few weeks it will be on the front burner for Colletti and Mattingly.

But in the meantime, it sure is fun to watch Darwin Barney make seemingly impossible plays and it is very clear to see that he absolutely positively is having the time of his life with his new team.

…and how can you not love that?