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When he gave vague answers this week about his contract situation and his potential interest in the Boston Red Sox’s top baseball operations job, Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said he did not intend to mislead. He also did not mean for his comments to be interpreted, as they were by some, as a precursor to his eventual departure.

What Hazen knew – but did not feel comfortable saying – was that leaving Arizona was the least likely outcome.

The Diamondbacks and Hazen have agreed to a contract extension, the club announced Friday evening, a move that means the Diamondbacks will not lose their well-respected GM to the Red Sox – or any other team – for the foreseeable future.

“I feel like we have a lot of unfinished business here together,” Hazen said.

The length of the deal is not known, but Hazen already was signed through 2021 on the original contract he received when he was hired in October 2016. The new deal runs beyond that.

Hazen said CEO Derrick Hall approached him about an extension at least 10 days ago – that is, well before the Red Sox fired their head of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, igniting speculation that Hazen might return to his native Boston. Hazen spent 11 years in the Red Sox organization before being hired by the Diamondbacks.

Hazen believes the Diamondbacks would have allowed him to explore an opportunity with the Red Sox had he wanted to pursue it – and had the Red Sox inquired.

“ ‘We know you’re from there, we know your family (is there), if that’s something that (happens),’ ” Hazen said, recounting his conversation with Hall. “Nothing has happened. Nothing did happen. To my knowledge, there was never a phone call made or anything. But in the hypothetical scenario that if something should come, we’ll have a conversation about it. I appreciated that.”

Hazen is in his third season with the Diamondbacks. He assembled a group that reached the postseason in 2017, taking over a team that underperformed the year before. He made mostly small changes around the edges of the roster and ended up winning 93 games and the wild-card game to reach the division series.

The Diamondbacks were in contention for nearly all of last year before fading in September, and the club appears likely to fall short of a playoff berth again this season, as well.

Still, Hazen’s work with the Diamondbacks draws glowing reviews throughout the game. He has modernized the organization’s baseball operations processes, moving it from a staunchly old-school setup to one regarded as at least on par with the rest of the industry.

He also has managed to keep the club competitive while overseeing the restocking of the farm system, which scouts, executives and prospect experts say is vastly improved from when he first got the job.

“That doesn’t mean anything until we translate it into wins at the major-league level,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and talk about farm-system rankings and things like that. That’s not a marker, in my mind, for success. Success is winning major league baseball games year-in and year-out. As evidenced by our record, we’re not where we need to be.”

Said Hall in a statement: “Mike and his staff have done a masterful job and they have short- and long-term plans here that are working towards building a sustainable winner. He is one of the brightest and most innovative baseball minds in the game, and I am thrilled that he has chosen to remain a D-Back regardless of outside opportunities.”

Hazen said that since he still had multiple years remaining on his contract he was not expecting Hall to approach him about a new deal.

“It’s not something that I think about or look at,” he said. “I was asked to do a job and I’m going to keep doing it until they tell me I’m not going to do it anymore.”

In interviews earlier this week, Hazen gave a boilerplate statement about the Red Sox speculation and refused to elaborate. He said he thought that since negotiations were ongoing he should keep it vague.

“It may not have been, in hindsight, the right thing to do, but that’s just kind of where I felt it was the right thing to do,” he said. “I didn’t want to elaborate on anything, so I felt that was the right answer.”