After managing a team that finished last in the American League East, John Farrell is hoping to fare better in the Far East. Farrell is managing a team of major league all-stars that arrived in Tokyo Sunday night and will begin the five-game Japan Series on Wednesday.

Farrell will have a little more firepower at his disposal for this series, with players such as Robinson Cano, Yasiel Puig and Evan Longoria representing the MLB side. Jose Altuve, the 2014 AL batting champ, will have to fight for playing time.

There are no Red Sox players on the roster, although Chris Capuano will start Game 4. Capuano, a native of West Springfield, Massachusetts, began the year with the Sox and ended it with the Yankees.

After a disappointing season, Farrell would be forgiven if he wanted to stay away from the limelight this fall. Instead, he is back in the dugout leading a team any manager would love to have.

“This is a great opportunity to be around other players that are all-stars and great players in their own right and at the same time represent Major League Baseball,” Farrell told me in a NESN interview before he left for the series.

“There’s some history to this Samurai Series. You get to expose yourself and immerse yourself for a short period of time in the culture of Japan.”

Farrell said he didn’t ask the league to load up the roster with free agents. It would’ve been nice to spend a week extolling the virtues of Fenway Park to up-for-grab players like Nelson Cruz, Pablo Sandoval and James Shields.

“Actually, there are a lot of restrictions when it comes to who would be available,” said Farrell. “One thing you’ve got to be really conscious of is that we’re starting to ramp up guys to play in November which is very abnormal. Their health, and their returning health to the states after the series is a priority for all of us.”

There goes my idea of taking the Yankee pitching staff and overworking them for a week.

Farrell is there to enjoy baseball, something he wasn’t able to do much over the last half of the 2014 season. Now that the season is over he’s eager to get back to work. This is a nice little working vacation, but he’s already itching to get to Fort Myers in February and see what type of team he has. With GM Ben Cherington already ensconced at the GM meetings in Arizona, that team could be taking shape soon.

“You can never predict how a free-agent market is going to unfold,” said Farrell. “It’s going to have a life of its own. How guys come off the board and who they go to … that’s going to direct us with our ‘Plan A’ or ‘C’ or ‘D’ or whatever it might be. I think we’ve got a pretty good handle on what’s available and what our resources are to deal from. It’s going to be a busy offseason.”

That was going to be the case before Farrell signed up for overseas duty. The manager knows the next two weeks of baseball will be fun. But we have no idea how much fun the 2015 Red Sox season will be.

Tom Caron is the studio host for Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.