In announcing John Farrell as their new manager yesterday the Blue Jays refused to disclose the length of his contract, which as I noted at the time is both odd and pointless because eventually someone with the team will tell someone with the media and then the attempt at secrecy will seem even weirder.
Turns out, “eventually” meant about six hours.
Toronto Sun columnist Bob Elliott broke the news last night that Farrell’s deal is for three seasons, which is more or less standard for a new manager.
According to general manager Alex Anthopoulos the Blue Jays wanted to keep the contract length a secret because it “creates unneeded speculation and takes attention away from the team.” Whether that’s true is one thing. Whether they had any shot of actually keeping that information secret is pretty clear: They didn’t.