How do you do all of that with the biggest budget in the National League?

The Wilpons ought to be asking that question. Instead, they’re firing the manager and half the coaches in the middle of the night and congratulating themselves for being tough and proactive.

When owners are losers, so are their teams. You can pretty much count on that. It’s what we’re seeing in New York. Just because you own a team and have a lot of money doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing. If there was any doubt about that, the Wilpons have erased it.

The New York Mess can say that the team’s just 6.5 games out in the NL East, but they’re not going to catch Philly, and they’re not going to get a wild card, not with the lineup they have; not with Wagner as the last line of defense.

This is essentially the same team that authored that historic collapse at the end of last year, and it’s looking more and more like that wasn’t an aberration but a true reflection of what they’re made of.

Willie Randolph is a great baseball man who deserves another shot somewhere else, in a place where management is sane and the roster isn’t stacked with underachievers, head cases, and superannuated superstars basking in the fading glory of years gone by.

The Wilpons and Minaya think they did something important by firing Randolph. They’re about to discover they did nothing, because the problem isn’t on the bench, it’s upstairs, where the guys who built the Mess work.

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