It's becoming a recycled comment, but I see I missed very little.
It's sort of to the point right now where nobody's immune from the stink on this team. Today, Matt Harvey and Bobby Parnell, two of the Mets few reliable players, were the ones who faltered. It was a rare bad outing for Harvey, who gave up a season-high 4 runs in 6.2 innings. He didn't pitch badly, certainly not by the standards of his teammates, but for him, of course, it wasn't great. Still, a stinker for him is probably a really good day for some lesser pitchers. Plus, given how well he's pitched to this point, logically, he's got to have a bad outing at some point, and if it's going to happen, it may as well be against perhaps the most potent offense in the National League.
Bobby Parnell also took it on the chin, giving up 3 runs in the 9th inning (though I didn't hear what happened, I found out later on that he wasn't helped by Ike Davis yakking on a grounder) in another rare poor performance. And, I suppose you can echo what's been said about Harvey. Plus, if Parnell is going to have a bad day, at least he's done it when Harvey also had a bad day, so as to keep the suckitude confined to one day.
But this isn't about Harvey or Parnell, who in general have performed rather well this season (to my surprise, Parnell settled down once he was named the closer and has finally seemed to get his act together). The rest of the team has just been a total drag on everything. Nobody outside of the two pitchers and David Wright have performed with any degree of consistency. It's starting to wear on even the most diehard of Mets fans, I'd have to imagine. It's killed any of the meager joy we could have taken in this season (it's beyond the point now where we're happy to have Baseball and too soon to begin getting wistful that the season is drawing to a close) and it's actually beginning to sap some of the juice from the hot prospects the team is banking on to save the future. The couple of "name" prospects that are on the way aren't going to swing the favor of the team the way it's composed right now. There's just not enough talent on the roster.
The result is that right now, the Mets come off as no better than the Cubs or the Padres (not quite as hopeless as the Marlins or Astros, but a little too close for comfort) and most fans have just become sick of it. The crowd at Monday night's game appeared to be less comprised of actual Mets fans than people who just thought it would be fun to go out to a Baseball game that night, or some groups of idiot hipster kids that were looking for an offbeat place to hang out. I mean, yes, the regulars are still there (Cowbell Man and Mr. Struck-Him-Out and his entourage have been present at every game I've been to this year, and the Hooligans have also been present on occasion), and I'm sure plenty in my ilk have and will continue to show up plenty of times, because that's simply what we do. But the more games I've been to this year, with tepid crowds that number between 10-15,000 (basically take whatever the announced attendance is and knock about 40% off that), the more I've noticed that there really aren't that many "Mets fans" there. And, I mean, can you blame them? Who, if you were someone just getting into Baseball right now, would want to root for this team? Who, who isn't someone who has lived and died with this franchise for 29 seasons like I have, or even longer like many Mets fans I know, would take the same kind of undying joy in being a Mets fan right now?
More than a few fans are starting to get really nervous that the improvement of the team may take much longer than expected. It'll happen, sure. But when?
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