The Mets Midnight Massacre

Even though you could sense that it was coming, the way the Mets organization handled the firing of Mets manager Willie Randolph seems downright odd. The Mets fired him and his pitching coach and first base coach two hours after winning the game against the Los Angeles Angels last night.

In a bizarrely timed housecleaning, Minaya fired Willie Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson and first base coach Tom Nieto shortly before midnight West Coast time (3 a.m. in New York) after all three had just returned from a 9-6 win here over the first-place Angels.

Why fire them at that point, and not the week before after losing six of seven games? Why fire them when the Mets showed signs of turning things around?

Those are the kinds of questions that will keep the sports talk radio busy for the rest of the summer. In the interim, bench coach Jerry Manuel will manage the team until a permanent replacement is found.

UPDATE:
Dueling press conferences later today. Willie goes first at 2PM, while Mets General Manager Omar Minaya goes at 5PM. Expect plenty of fireworks from the reporters, who are pissed that they had to find out about this via a press release.

Anonymous emailer points out that the Sports Hernia blog has a list of 13 ways in which the Mets could have handled the firing better:

“Hit Willie over the head with a steel chair while he makes a pitching change; then spray paint ‘F-I-R-E-D’ on his back,” as well as, “Drive him to the woods so Silvio can chase him down and shoot him in the back.”

It certainly ranks up there in the list of bizarre firings.

Utter disgrace.

WFAN and ESPN 1050 are both going to have an earful on what the Mets did. Look, most Met fans wanted Willie gone, but I think it's pretty near unanimous that people don't like the way the Mets did it. Classless comes to mind. Cowardly. Inane. Stupid.

UPDATE:
This is just pathetic. Minaya says that logistics prevented the Mets from firing Willie before the road trip.

Mets general manager Omar Minaya said there was no way to avoid firing Willie Randolph in California, on the first day of a six-game trip, because of "logistics."

What logistics in particular? The inability to find someone before 3:14AM EDT to inform Willie he's been fired? Sorry, but we can't fire you until after you're on the West Coast because your bags were already loaded on the plane? We wanted to make sure that your uniform was in the laundry?