In an unprecedented wave of dismissals, three managers who led their teams to the post-season last year were excused from further duty with their teams: John Farrell in American League East champion Boston, Joe Girardi in New York with the A.L. wild-card Yankees and Dusty Baker in National League East champion Washington.

Now that the season has resumed following the All-Star break, this is a good time to see where those teams and their new managers are.

The Red Sox, under rookie Alex Cora, are exactly where they finished with Farrell, leading the A.L. East. The Yankees, also with a rookie, Aaron Boone, managing them, are in second place and have the best wild-card record.

So much for consistency. It ends with the Nationals, who have struggled in trying to justify their firing Baker and replacing him with rookie Dave Martinez. Perhaps the oddest aspect of the Nationals’ managerial machinations is they decided when they hired Baker that they would replace him after two years, no matter how well the team did under Baker.

In fact, Baker produced two division champions in two seasons, but he failed to get the Nationals beyond the division round of the post-season either year, losing five-game series to the Dodgers and the Cubs.

The Nationals, Baker said, have never explained why they limited him to two years, despite his regular-season success (95 and 97 wins).

“I was never told anything, and I didn’t ask,” he said.

Nor have the Nationals explained why they ignored Baker’s choice of a successor, even though Baker said he was told they wanted him to groom his successor. “When I got there thy told me they wanted me to name my successor,” he said.

Baker’s choice was Chris Speier, his long-time bench coach, but the Nationals didn’t consider Speier, and he is neither their manager nor a member of their coaching staff.

In a telephone conversation with Baker last week, I offered my theory. The trend, I said, seems to be general managers hiring younger, less experienced managers – Baker is 69 years old with 22 years of major league managing – over whom they can exercise greater control, telling them what the general manager wants in terms of whom to play and where to play them. Baker disagreed.

“I don’t think that was it in my case,” said Baker, who is well beyond having a general manager tell him how to manage. But that’s precisely the point. Today’s general managers don’t want independent managers.

The saddest development is the game has changed so much it has moved into a different era and has left old-timers like Baker behind. Except a manager doesn’t have to be as old as Baker to fall off the edge.

Girardi was 53 and not that far removed from a World Series championship when the Yankees disposed of him last October. It might have been, in my opinion, the most undeserved dismissal in recent memory.

“Girardi could’ve been manager of the year last year,” Baker said.

However, the Yankees’ highly overrated general manager, Brian Cashman, saw it differently, and Hal Steinbrenner, captain of his late father’s ship, told Cashman to make the Girardi decision. Cashman didn’t offer a public explanation for Girardi’s dismissal but let others in the front office explain that the young players were uncomfortable with Girardi as their manager.

Does that mean Aaron Judge could have hit 62 home runs instead of 52 under a more congenial manager? No, it meant that Cashman, who in his two decades as general manager squandered billions of dollars in player payroll, could hire a manager over whom he could exercise greater control.

There’s nothing wrong with the Yankees not being better off than they were last year under Girardi, and there’s still time for them to be better off. But if Yankee clubhouse life was going to improve under a new manager, why hasn’t it been reflected in the standings?

Same with the Red Sox. If replacing Farrell with Cora was supposed to send the Red Sox double-digits ahead of the Yankees, why hasn’t it? The day the season resumed the Red Sox built their lead over the Yankees to 5 ½ games, but nearly a third of the season remains, plenty of time for the standings to undergo significant changes.

It could even happen for the Nationals, though they don’t seem to have played well enough to generate the necessary momentum to catapult them to the top of the division.

Baker’s not rooting against them, though who could blame him if he were. The Nationals had no more reason to fire him than the Yankees had reason to fire Girardi and the Red Sox Farrell. If the Nationals don’t return to the playoffs and the Red Sox and Yankees don’t win the World Series, should General Managers Mike Rizzo, Dave Dombrowski and Cashman be held accountable? Absolutely, it says here.

They made unnecessary changes supposedly to make the teams better, and if they’re not better, off with their heads.

Meanwhile, the old man of the bunch, Baker, is enjoying himself, free of managerial pressure and free to watch his son, Darren, play college baseball. Major league managers don’t have that freedom. Not that Baker would have ignored an offer to continue managing, but none was forthcoming. He initially didn’t even hear from the Nationals.

“I was there for a week,” Baker related, “didn’t hear anything and I went home.”

The next day, he recalled, Rizzo called and said the Nationals were going in a different direction. When teams fire managers, even general managers, they’re always going in a different direction. I suppose once in a while they get lucky and pick the right direction.

In this instance, Baker believes the Nationals went in the wrong direction. “I know when I did a good job,” he said.

Baker went most of last winter without a job. “No one called,” he said. And then surprisingly Brian Sabean called. Sabean is the Giants’ executive vice president of baseball operations under whom Baker worked for 10 years when he managed the Giants from 1993 through 2002. Another call later, Baker was special adviser to Larry Baer, the team’s president and chief executive officer.

Baker isn’t a fan of the changes baseball has undergone during his time in the game. “I’m seeing a bunch of strikeouts and fly balls,” he said, citing two changes. “There’s more to baseball than strikeouts and home runs. There’s more than analytics. The bottom line is the game is played by people.

TO REMOVE FOOT FROM MOUTH…

When an owner or other club executive or manager or player steps out of line and makes a clearly inappropriate public comment, the commissioner issues a statement setting the individual straight. If the comment is egregious enough, the commissioner may accompany his statement with a fine. However, when it is the commissioner who makes the utterly stupid and inappropriate comment, who is responsible for setting the commissioner straight?

I guess that’s where we, the members of the news media, come in.

To: Commissioner Rob Manfred

Subject: Mike Trout remarks

What you said about Trout and his desire or lack of desire in promoting himself ranks at the top of a list of the 10 dumbest statements a commissioner of any sport has ever made, and that includes comments that Spike Eckert made in his brief tenure as baseball commissioner.

Trout, of course, is generally recognized as the best player in the game, winning awards whenever and wherever they are given out. Some observers support their view by using the metric known as WAR. Others are confident in their eyes to make the claim.

The commissioner presumably knows something of Trout’s status, but in his severely questionable comments last week he betrayed that knowledge. Manfred made his Trout comments in response to an article in USA Today, the only newspaper today that seems to spark worthwhile comment. Only in this instance the Manfred comments were anything but worthwhile.

“Mike has made decisions on what he wants to do, doesn’t want to do, how he wants to spend his free time or not spend his free time,” Manfred was quoted as saying. “I think we could help him make his brand very big. But he has to make a decision to engage. It takes time and effort.”

Reading Manfred’s remarks, one could reasonably get the idea that Trout had complained about a lack of interest in him. But nowhere does the article make that suggestion. And the Angels were so bothered by Manfred’s comments that they issued a statement on Trout’s behalf:

“I have received lots of questions about Commissioner Manfred‘s recent statement. I am not a petty guy and would really encourage everyone to just move forward. Everything is cool between the Commissioner and myself. End of story. I am ready to just play some baseball!”

PERSONAL STREAK IMPERILED

When this week began, Matt Carpenter of St. Louis was in position to wreck my unique record. Carpenter had hit home runs in six successive games and was two games away from becoming the fourth player to hit home runs in eight consecutive games. The three players who have done it are Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993, Don Mattingly in 1987 and Dale Long in 1956.

How do I figure in this record?

I believe I am the only person to have seen at least one home run in each eight-game streak.

I saw one of Griffey’ homers and one of Mattingly’s at Yankee Stadium. I recognize that many fans or writers could have done that double. But did anyone who was at Yankee Stadium for those home runs see Long hit one at Forbes Field in 1956? I have previously written about this before, wondering if anyone would come forward and say he saw a Long home run at Forbes Field, as well as the other two, but no one has. Now it’s up to Carpenter.

I will not be in Chicago Sunday or Cincinnati Monday for the Cardinals games in those cities so Carpenter is on his own. I’m rooting against him.