Former Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona will be interviewing for the vacant managerial job in Cleveland on Friday afternoon. There has been speculation that Francona would be out of the price range for Cleveland, but Indians GM Chris Antonetti say money will not be a limiting factor in their search for a manager (via Tom Withers):
Antonetti said economics will not be an issue in #Indians search for manager.
— Tom Withers (@twithersAP) October 4, 2012
There has been speculation that Francona was simply interviewing for the job as a favor for Indians' president Mark Shapiro, giving the impression that Cleveland is serious about landing one of the bigger names on the market. Antonetti addressed that topic, as well as a timetable on when fans can expect to know the next manager of the Indians (via ESPN Cleveland):
"With respect to his interest, I don’t think Terry would be coming in tomorrow if he wasn’t genuinely interested and we wouldn’t have him in here for an interview if we weren’t interested."
"My preference would be to resolve it as quickly as we can but I don’t want to do that at the expense at making sure we get the right person in place to lead our major league team."
The Indians fired Manny Acta in the final week of the season, and Sandy Alomar Jr. took over for the final six games. Alomar also interviewed for the Indians' managerial job on Thursday afternoon.