Now? Questions arise about Randolph's job security, though Minaya offered a healthy endorsement after the elimination and no change is expected. The ax may instead fall on coaches. Rumblings of high-level disenchantment with pitching coach Rick Peterson, who signed a three-year deal last winter, are surfacing.

"Willie Randolph, to me, has done a good job," Minaya said. "You don't look at a person for one year. ... The changes that have happened here, as a general manager, that's what I look at in a manager or anybody else. The past three years with Willie Randolph has turned our franchise around from where it was before he got here."

…in the end, i believe this current group of players got a bit sloth like through much of the summer, and those bad actions became habit and spilled over in to crunch time…i hesitantly blame Willie Randolph, because while i respect his confidence and believe it is ultimately a good thing, i suspect it may also have helped to create a sense of entitlement that morphed in to a sense of apathy, which led to the team’s uninspired play…ultimately, however, i mostly fault the players, who are professionals, and yet who actually went on record as acknowledging their malaise, like Carlos Delgado, who in early September told reporters, “We’ve got so much talent, I think sometimes we get bored.”…there’s nothing worse than wasted talent unfortunately, a price will be paid for this disappointment, and that’s what i am most disappointed about…

The Mets didn’t lose the NL East because of a failure of character. They didn’t lose because they were somehow less virtuous than the Phillies. They didn’t lose because of some grand plan of an incomprehensible God. They lost because they just didn’t play good baseball down the stretch, and they got beat. Tom Glavine’s got some postseason experience (if it matters — I don’t know if it does), and has proved his worth in the game a thousand times over. No matter how big the strike zone was for him during his career, he’s a deserving Hall Of Famer. And today, he just got pounded. Not because of some mystical rubbish that allows those of us with access to a keyboard or microphone to pass judgment on players like some sort of meddlesome scold, but because he just got beat up.

It happens. We notice it more when it happens at the end of a long drama. If this game had happened in May, it still would have counted the same in the standings.Congratulations to the Phillies.

Let's start by saying that, technically, the New York Mets didn't lose anything. That's because any financial loss assumes that they would have made the playoffs to begin with. While that's a good assumption, considering that they were up by seven games with 17 games to go, I'm just pointing out that any losses aren't coming directly out of owner Fred Wilpon's pocket. The loss is in potential bucks and with the Mets and Yankees opening new stadiums in 2009, I'd argue that the Mets lost more potential dollars than they have in any other year of team history.