This shouldn't exactly come as a shock to anyone, but the Mets have finally fired Willie Randolph.

The AP is reporting that Randolph was ignominiously let go in the middle of the night about two hours after the Mets' 9-6 victory over the Angels on Monday night. The timing was a little curious as the Mets had won two in a row and are now almost back at .500 (34-35), combined with the fact that they weren't in New York. Bench coach Jerry Manuel will take over on an interim basis.

Pitching coach Rick Peterson and first base coach Tom Nieto also got the gate in what is an enormous overhaul for the team.

Ken Oberkfell, the club's manager at Triple-A New Orleans, and Dan Warthen, pitching coach for the Zephyrs, will join the major league staff along with Luis Aguayo, a Mets field coordinator.

Obviously the meeting that Randolph had only a few weeks ago with Omar Minaya and the team owners, where Minaya said "Willie has my support. He has the support of our ownership," was pretty much a total lie. He never had anyone's support.

You may remember Randolph brought up the race issue as he detailed the way he'd been shown by SNY, the team's TV network. He quickly apologized for that, but it didn't exactly endear him to anyone in the Mets organization, a club which has consistently looked to hire minority candidates of late.

The truth is the Mets pretty much had to make this move. They're a $138 million dollar team that has a 162-game trailing record of basically .500 ball. Not to mention that Randolph was at the helm for one of the worst late season collapses in the history of baseball last year. It's somewhat surprising he wasn't just canned after that debacle.

Right now this team is a mess, and while this total shakeup is a move to revive the team, I think you can pretty much count them out now for the year.

Omar Minaya has also got to be on the hot seat, considering he's the architect for this lumbering, overpaid, inconsistent squad.

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and opinions about the firing in the comments.