Willie Randolph, David Price and A.J. Burnett

Here are your updated playoff seeds:

AL: Tampa Bay (1) vs. Texas (3), Minnesota (2) vs. Yankees (4)

NL: Philadelphia (1) vs. Cincinnati (3), San Francisco (2) vs Atlanta (4)

Thoughts: The Braves' victory over Florida and the Padres' loss to the Cubs change it up once again, although Atlanta (88-69) and San Diego (87-69) are actually even in the loss column. 

Even in the Braves' victory, however, they lost Martin Prado for "a while," Bobby Cox said. When six days remain in the season, "a while" means "He ain't coming back this week, that's for sure." The Braves' fight for survival, in the context of this being Cox's final year, is becoming the game's top story.

--When I arranged to travel with the Yankees this week, my motivations were two-fold: 1) I figured the Yankees would, at the very least, be competing with Tampa Bay for the AL East title; and 2) I anticipated there would be absolutely no reason to go to Citi Field. The Mets will become interesting again next week, when they start reshaping their front office and the manager's office.

There is one person I would have liked to see in Flushing this week, however, and that's Willie Randolph.

Time and distance sure have made Randolph look good, haven't they? He speaks in Anthony Rieber's story about wanting another chance at managing, and you'd have to think that the Mets' downfall since firing him can only help his cause.

So with the benefit of the aforementioned time, what do we make of Randolph's three and a half seasons as Mets manager?

It's too black-and-white to say that Randolph has no one to blame but himself, or, the other way, that Randolph solely fell victim to the Mets' dysfunction. The truth lies somewhere in between. But here's how I lay it out:

1) Randolph had absolutely lost the clubhouse by the end of the run. A good percentage of the players actively disliked him - as did, for that matter, the people above him in the Mets' food chain. 

The perfect story about this is Randolph's managing of Tom Glavine's run for 300 wins in 2007. This should've been only a positive for Randolph. Glavine was pitching well enough, easily, to stay in the rotation. Glavine's teammates liked him, so there was no issue there. It was all good.

But as John Feinstein documented in his book, "Living on the Black" _ and as I mentioned here _ Randolph infuriated Glavine and his teammates by downplaying the accomplishment. He was fed an alley-oop, and he turned it into a liability.

All of this, though? It's excusable, IMO. It's Randolph being a human being. It's mistakes from which, you'd think, he can learn.

--UPDATE, 8:31 a.m.: On Twitter, @ProAm500 reminded of Randolph's extremely controversial comments about SNY. Those were pretty horrible, and they reflect the same insecurities that fueled the Glavine comments. Can Randolph change, at age 56? At the least, I think it would be worth interviewing him to find out.

2) Tony Bernazard joined the Mets at pretty much the same time Randolph did, during the winter of 2004-05. He quickly curried favor with ownership due to his brash personality, a striking contrast to his nominal boss Omar Minaya.

And it wasn't long at all before Bernazard - who was supposed to be running the farm system - became a regular in the Mets' clubhouse, with the backing of the front office. Because players knew they could turn to him as an authority figure, he made it highly difficult for Randolph to run the room as any manager would want to do. He started to lobby for Randolph's dismissal no later than the middle of the 2007 season.

And this? Well, this is inexcusable. No well-run corporation would allow something like this to take place. The fact that Bernazard hasn't found work since his firing last year, that should tell you what people in the industry think of him. 

So it's not accurate, IMO, to portray Randolph as someone brought down only by other people's actions. He has to take accountability, too Yet he certainly deserves another chance.

As for the Mets? With another front-office restructuring coming soon, you just hope they've learned from their mistakes, and give their new head of baseball operations and manager the sort of backing they need to thrive at their jobs. That means creating a structure in which there's no room for Bernazard Part II.

--Rays ace David Price set Twitter aflutter last night with this tweet: "Had a chance to clinch a post season spot tonight with about 10,000 fans in the stands....embarrassing."

The Rays had an announced crowd of 12,446 at Tropicana Field as they lost to Baltimore, thereby keeping alive the most remote possibility that the Rays, Yankees and Red Sox could finish with identical records. 

Look, I understand Price's frustration. I really do, as well as that of Evan Longoria. They play on a team that visits Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park three times each per season. They must yearn to have such crowds.

But at the end of the day, you just don't rip people for not purchasing your product, IMO. Especially when it's a rich guy lighting into, theoretically, non-rich people. Price obviously felt bad, as he expressed remorse in a later tweet. 

The Rays have a major stadium problem on their hands. Huge. It solves nothing, however, to go after fans. The problem, most believe, is the location of the ballpark. So it's on the Rays to figure out what they have to is draw fans. And if the only solution is to leave the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, or even the entire state of Florida, then so be it.

But don't dump on fans It's just not right.

--Off the Yankees game, I wrote about A.J. Burnett, and what the Yankees should do about him. He's even less trustworthy than he was a year ago, but the Yankees have little choice but to use him in the American League Championship Series, should they advance that far.

Looking ahead to this winter, can the Yankees plan for 2011 with Burnett as one of their five starters? His contract (another $49.5 million from 2011 through 2013) makes him highly difficult to trade. So if they hold onto him, and let's say they sign Cliff Lee and bring back Andy Pettitte, then they'd have a rotation of Sabathia, Lee, Pettitte, Phil Hughes and Burnett, with Ivan Nova, David Phelps, Romulo Sanchez and veteran, minor-league contract types lurking.

If Pettitte doesn't come back, then it becomes a little trickier.

--Live chat at noon tomorrow. With a little international flavor, what with me being in Canada.

--I'll check in later from Rogers Centre. And this time, I mean it.