The Texas Rangers have named Matt Blood as the teams new farm director, per reports from Ken Rosenthal and Levi Weaver on Twitter. The Rangers did not have a formal position of “farm director” in 2018.

This is an intriguing hire, as not only have the Rangers gone outside the organization for this hire, but they’ve gone a non-traditional route, as Blood had been the director for the USA Baseball U18 National Team. Blood was named to that position in January, 2016, after seven years of being an area scout for the St. Louis Cardinals — which means he worked for current g.m. of the Houston Astros, Jeff Luhnow, for a while.

Blood is relatively young — he graduated from UNC in 2007, so he would seem to be in his early- to mid-30s — and is the second prominent front office hire from outside the organization this offseason, joining Shiraz Rahman, who came over from the Cubs as an assistant g.m. There have been some suggestions that the organization may have been too insular in recent years, with the prioritization of promoting from within potentially limiting the Rangers’ opportunities to get fresh voices and viewpoints in from outside the organization. It appears the front office is making an effort to get new people in place from outside.