The Boston Red Sox won the American League East in 2016 under John Farrell, and the organization decided Monday to keep the manager around a bit longer. 

The Red Sox announced they exercised the club option on Farrell’s contract for the 2018 season.

Travis Lee of WMTW noted the Red Sox had already told Farrell he would return for the 2017 season. Monday’s news ensures the manager won’t have to worry about serving as a leader with lame-duck status as the team looks to win a second World Series title under his watch.

President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said Monday at the winter meetings that Farrell’s “solid presence” and the fact the “players played hard for him” ultimately contributed to the decision, per Scott Lauber of ESPN.com.

The 2017 campaign will be Farrell’s fifth as manager of the Red Sox. The team is 339-309 under him in four years.

Things started as well as he could have possibly hoped with an American League East crown and World Series championship in 2013. However, there was a significant drop-off the following two seasons before a bounce-back effort in 2016:

Farrell also managed the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011 and 2012 and accumulated a 154-170 record before Boston hired its former pitching coach with one year remaining on his Toronto contract. The Red Sox sent infielder Mike Aviles to the Blue Jays as compensation (and received pitcher David Carpenter), per ESPN.com.

Boston was swept by the eventual American League champion Cleveland Indians in the divisional round of the 2016 playoffs, but Monday’s news means there will be continuity in the dugout for a club that has a number of young building blocks, including 24-year-old Mookie Betts, 26-year-old Jackie Bradley Jr. and 24-year-old Xander Bogaerts.

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