For some Major League managers, winning isn’t enough.

Managing a big league baseball team has become a thankless job. Three of the eight skippers who took their teams into the divisional playoffs have lost their jobs, and a fourth apparently had to clean house to keep his.

The Red Sox fired John Farrell after he won three American League East titles and a Worlds Series in five years, and beat cancer on top of that. Yet no one in Boston seemed upset that the mild-mannered Farrell took the fall for his weak-hitting team losing in the division playoffs for a second straight season.

Sixty-eight-year-old Dusty Baker suffered the same fate after Washington won 192 games the last two seasons and the National League East both years. Baker also could not get his team into the league championship series, even though the umps blew a crucial call in the Nats’ game-five loss to the Cubs.

Those same Cubs, who won the world championship in 2016 after a 108-year drought, forced manager Joe Maddon to fire most of his coaches after failing to return to the World Series, losing to the Dodgers in five games. Maddon picked up two coaches from Farrell’s Red Sox staff and hired his old pitching coach, Jim Hickey, from his old team in Tampa Bay.

Thursday, the Yankees fired franchise fixture Joe Giradi after the Baby Bombers fell one win short of reaching the World Series, losing game seven to the Astros. Giradi, who played on three championship Yankee teams, managed them to the 2009 title and did not have a losing record in 10 seasons. Apparently, the 53-year-old hadn’t gotten caught up to speed on the saber metric stats now used in baseball.

Yes, it’s a business, but good luck to the Yankees in hiring someone as popular with the players as Giradi to take this talented young team up one more level. The Red Sox hired popular Houston bench coach Alex Cora, who has vast baseball experience except he has never managed on the Major League level. As for the Nationals? Well, they are looking at one of Maddon’s coaches with the Cubs or, perhaps, the Nats could end Giradi’s unemployment after two days by deciding he’s good enough to manage in Washington, if not New York.

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