Today will be a day for praise, excitement and cliches.
AA will praise Farrell, Farrell will praise AA, the organization, the returning coaches and the players.
Farrell will talk about how excited he is to be here, how excited he is about the team, and how he thinks the Jays can compete over the next few years. The Jays will be excited to land Farrell, a highly touted managerial prospect.
Mixed in among the praise and excitement will be a fair number of cliches. Giving 100% or, even better, 110% will likely come up. The fact that baseball is played between the lines and the manager doesn't play will probably make an appearance. Manufacturing runs might show up. And on and on, today is a day of love.
Don't expect too many hard hitting questions and answers today, its the off-season so look for softballs and lobs.
The local scribes are weighing in already.
Bob Elliott kicked things off yesterday talking with Bud Black who played with Farrell back in their Cleveland days. Black talked about pitchers managing and the difference between being a coach and a manager.
As a starter you pitched one day, then sat and observed the game for four days,” Black said. “John has a great background in a lot of areas. I see a man with great leadership qualities.”
Farrell has never managed a game, like Black when he took over the Padres.
What was Black’s “wholly crap! I didn’t know this about the job” moment?
“When you are a coach you come to the park, you do your work and you go home,” Black said. “As a manager it’s 24 hours of being on call. The switch is never off. The GM is calling you in the morning. The trainer is calling you at noon. That was the biggest difference for me.
“You’re in and you’ll all in.
The Globe had three stories on the hire. Stephen Brunt kicks it off. Brunt delivers a history lesson on previous Jays managers but he includes this prediction:
Farrell is not a caretaker. His job will be to win. He is a pitching coach by trade taking over a team deep in live arms, and arrives at a time when the critical talent mass seems nearly there. A season or two from now, the owners will be expected to dip into their pockets to pay for the final pieces, and then the Jays will take their once-in-a-blue-moon shot.
Jeff Blair gives the hire a quick once-over telling us Bruce Walton will stay and how fresh blood is welcome.
Making it better is the fact that the status of current Blue Jays pitching coach Bruce Walton was never an issue; Walton is the one member of the coaching staff that absolutely had to be retained, and sources say Farrell – the Red Sox pitching coach – had no issue with it.
It’s nice to celebrate those back-to-back champions, especially with Roberto Alomar’s almost sure-fire election to the Hall of Fame this winter to become the first player entering Cooperstown wearing a Blue Jays hat. But enough of this parade of former players into the manager’s office. An entire generation of baseball fans has moved on and bringing in somebody from this far outside the organization is refreshing.
Robert McLeod checks in with a couple of Blue Jays. John McDonald knows Farrell from his days in the Indians organization.
I felt he always had the respect of the people in the organization,” McDonald said when asked why. “He seemed to be a good communicator, which I always thought was important no matter what level you are at.
“When you talked to him you just really believed in what he was saying. He spoke with conviction and he cared about players getting better."
Casey Janssen likes that there is a pitching minded manager.
"Obviously Cito was a position player so it's going to be interesting to see how things change,” Janssen said. “For me it is going to be kind of exciting to have a manager who's going to be able to run the bullpen well and run the rotation. That's kind of where it all starts."
