Every baseball season winds down to some inevitable off-season bloodletting. Most of the attention goes right to the bottom line, as disappointed or budget-minded teams let free agents-tobe walk away. However, the more fundamental changes are likely to arrive early in the coming hot stove league, as the 30 big league organizations consider or reconsider their managers and general managers. Only after the clubs sort out who belongs to their 2007 brain trusts can we can expect the mayhem of the winter shopping season.

In Miami, there’s little doubt that the Marlins are playing their last few games with Joe Girardi as their manager, despite equally small doubt that he’s among the favorites for the National League’s Manager of the Year award. More than anything else, Girardi’s situation is the product of owner Jeffrey Loria’s ham-fisted absolutism; it seems he asked his employer to stop riding the umps like you average drunken season-ticket holder.

Girardi’s imminent pink slip may trigger a ripple effect among big league managers because he’s understandably seen as a commodity, despite the ongoing sniping against him by his employer. The former Cubs backstop is seen as a fine future manager for the team that he originally came up with; helping matters is that Dusty Baker has overstayed his welcome in Wrigleyville now that his four-year deal with the Cubs has produced two straight losing records and innumerable pitching injuries.

There are already rumors that the Mariners might be interested in Baker even though incumbent Mike Hargrove has a year left on his deal in Seattle. The nightmare scenario on the West Coast isn’t Baker going to the land of brews and showers, but instead the suggestion that he might be available to a Dodgers team that, should it fall short of the playoffs, might scapegoat manager Grady Little. Baker starred for the Dodgers in the 1970s, and it’s expected that he’d welcome the opportunity to return to the organization.

Baker is as veteran-friendly and rookies-intolerant as any manager in the game, so it would be a perfect storm to hook him up with the superb collection of minor-league talent dug up by Dodgers scouting director Logan White. General manager Ned Colletti has already been quite generous in regard to prospect sell-offs during this summer’s pursuit of a title; a combination of Colletti and Baker might lead to a wholesale liquidation of Dodger talent.

While Girardi’s predicament in Miami has generated the most drama, the really high stakes are in the executive suites, not the dugout. In Chicago, there’s the question of whether Cubs GM Jim Hendry will outlast Baker or fall with him. Hendry has fulfilled the player development side of his responsibilities, but the management of the major league roster has had as many disappointments as success stories — the trades for Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez were outstanding moves, but last winter’s expensive bullpen shopping has not provided the Cubs with quality relief help.

Further down in the standings in Pittsburgh, last winter’s quest to spend and make the Pirates competitive should have made the discredited Dave Littlefield even more discredited, but his reputation for being hamstrung by owner Kid McClatchy’s shallow pockets — and his willingness to not publicly complain about it — might preserve him in cellar management.

Elsewhere, Kevin Towers’s future in San Diego seems intimately tied to the club’s playoff hopes.A Padres collapse in the final weekend might give team president Sandy Alderson the opportunity to install his own choice in the GM’s chair, perhaps either “Moneyball” starlet and Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta or player development veteran Grady Fuson.

The Nationals’ Jim Bowden has worked wonders in shoring up his position in Washington after nabbing Alfonso Soriano and subsequently pillaging the Reds in the deal that brought outfielder Austin Kearns and shortstop Felipe Lopez. Nevertheless, there’s the question of whether a free-wheeling transactions-junkie like Bowden will fit well with the organization’s new ownership group or the Atlanta-like professionalism expected to be ushered in by new team president (and former Braves and Hawks exec) Stan Kasten.

Back among the field managers, beyond Girardi and Baker, managers who could be on the spot include Kansas City’s Buddy Bell, Toronto’s John Gibbons, and perhaps even Texas’s Buck Showalter. Bell might simply be out of luck as the manager hired by GM Dayton Moore’s predecessor, Allard Baird, with Moore probably leaning on his associations with the Braves (his former organization) to bring in someone like Braves third base coach Fredi Gonzalez. Gonzalez won three Manager of the Year awards in a solid 10-year career as a minor league skipper before his four-year stint coaching third in Atlanta.

In contrast, both Gibbons and Showalter have gotten public shows of support from their respective GMs, but both have to deal with war on two fronts: disappointing results on the field and clubhouse discontent off of it. Showalter, however, has three guaranteed years on his contract, plus an option for 2010, and that ought to keep him secure; Gibbons is only under contract through next season, and his sometimes-bloody confrontations with players on his own roster have been publicly embarrassing.

Frank Robinson is something of a National landmark within the game, but the same considerations that might endanger Bowden might also encourage Robinson to slip off into an emeritus position within the organization, perhaps creating an opportunity for coaches Davey Lopes or Tony Beasley. Lopes has his former stint as the Padres’ manager to his credit, while Beasley is a nativeWashingtonian with three Manager of the Year awards in five years as a minor league manager, as well as a .590 winning percentage in that time.

Ms. Karhl is a regular writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art analysis, visit baseballprospectus.com.