TORONTO – The Toronto Blue Jays announced the hiring of Ben Cherington as vice-president of baseball operations on Wednesday afternoon.

Other teams also held talks with the former Boston Red Sox general manager, according to sources, indicating that he’ll work with many facets of the front office’s baseball side, with an emphasis on player development.

Cherington led the Red Sox to a World Series championship in 2013, but left the organization last year after Dave Dombrowski was hired as the president of baseball operations. He then spent the spring semester teaching at Columbia University.

Dombrowski has credited Cherington’s work in helping to acquire and groom a talented young core that includes Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Andrew Benintendi. But his moves before the 2015 season — signing free agents Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval — blew up in a failed campaign.

Cherington began his career as a baseball executive in 1998 with the Cleveland Indians as an advance scout, working under Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro’s umbrella. A year later he joined the Red Sox as an amateur scout before working his way up the front office.