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Are the Blue Jays and Red Sox talking John Farrell again?
It's the story that just won't go away it seems, until the Boston Red Sox get what they want from the Toronto Blue Jays as another disappointing season has left them without a manager.
You can fill in the Boston management backstory of the last year or so. The one that in short had Terry Francona fired at the end of the 2011 season, saw Bobby Valentine hired and then of course, fired after a last place finish in the American League East this season.
Once again John Farrell's name is the one that has seemed to find its way to the top of the Red Sox list, even with the number of prospective candidates Boston has already interviewed for the position of replacing Valentine.
Farrell was apparently Boston's choice to replace Francona after the 2011 season, but the Red Sox couldn't come to an agreement with the Jays on compensation.
Now with both their seasons long over and Boston with a managerial hole to fill, the Jays and Red Sox are talking again.
The Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo reported yesterday:
From what we've been able to piece together, the discussions have begun at the ownership level, but the compensation names will have to be resolved by the general managers, Ben Cherington and Alex Anthopoulos. No indication whether it has reached that stage.
If you're the Red Sox, you're trying to use the White Sox-Marlins deal for Ozzie Guillen as a parameter for compensation. The Marlins gave up a couple of mid-level prospects for the White Sox to release Guillen from his contract. At the time, the White Sox were considering a change anyway, so they got what they could and moved on to Robin Ventura.
Anthopoulos has a different set of issues. The Red Sox are divisional rivals, so he has to receive something that would appease the masses in Toronto, where the team seems perennially on the cusp but never able to get over the hump.
And that's where these apparent talks have always stopped as the Jays have been unable to come to an agreement with the Red Sox on who they'd receive in return for sending their manager over.
As Shi Davidi wrote in his column at Sportsnet.ca late Thursday evening, the Jays have done just about everything to prove their commitment to Farrell including changing a team policy last season that would prevent contracted employees from making lateral moves and standing behind Farrell after a disappointing 73-89 season.
Davidi believes that if talks are progressing and if a trade does end up going down than the compensation the Jays receive for Farrell "better be good, damn good." He wrote:
To accept anything less than a significant player who can help on the field immediately, or a desirable prospect that can be peddled elsewhere to get some immediate reinforcements, would be an embarrassment for the Blue Jays, who have done little to shut down a steady campaign by a divisional rival aimed at poaching a key staff member.
They simply cannot come out of such a deal without exacting a painful price from the Red Sox, given that Anthopoulos has already gone on record to say the team has more important work to do than conduct another manager search, and that Farrell may proceed to steady a club they'll be directly competing against next year.
Further, there is an important strategic value to all the proprietary information Farrell would take back with him to Boston, providing the Red Sox a valuable window into how the Blue Jays operate.
Finally, they need an optic win to deter other teams from trying to lure other Blue Jays employees over for similar lateral shifts, to keep them from looking like a training ground for one of the game's financial Goliaths, and to not look weak before the free agents they intend to pursue this winter. An ideal sales pitch doesn't include: "Come to Toronto, this manager won't flee to help our direct opposition."
And so Alex Anthopoulos and Jays management need to make a call. They need to determine who they would want from the Red Sox — whether it be Clay Buchholz, Daniel Bard, or anybody else on the roster — as compensation for Farrell and they need to stick by it and accept nothing less. Otherwise they'll appear weak and look like nothing more than a smaller market team being bullied by one of the games most storied franchises.
