There's been so much negativity around the Mets for the last few seasons that it only felt right to try to keep an even-handed perspective on the team.
No jumping to bad conclusions or assuming negative outcomes in these parts. No sir, we're about cool-headed, rational judgments borne of actual on-field facts and not spreadsheet innuendo or anything else.
It's almost as if the Mets found something offensive in this approach.
They spent their first homestand of the year doing everything possible to make anyone willing to give them the benefit of the doubt feel stupider than those who thought Friendster was going to wipe the floor with Facebook. The fact that Terry Collins wrote a letter to fans promising that they'd be proud of this team feels more like a piece of performance art than a heartfelt outpouring at this point in time.
Collins tried to say earlier this week that the Mets are pitch or a swing away from winning many of the games they've lost this season. While it is true that they have held leads in each of the last five losses, Collins's assertion is a pretty major stretch.
You don't lose eight of nine games or nine of your first 13 contests simply by getting a few bad breaks. You lose those games because you aren't a very good baseball team.
And the Mets, my friends, are not a very good baseball team right now. Maybe that changes as the team reshuffles their roster, but, for now, they have no starting pitching, no relief pitching and a propensity for making sloppy mistakes that would make the Bad News Bears blush.
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They also don't have Troy Tulowitzki.
Tulo homered in each of the four games, went 10-for-16 and generally dominated games in a way that is rarely seen in a game based on a series of individual battles. You can't expect the Mets to have players who take care of business that way at the plate, but you are free to wonder why they allow others to crush them so thoroughly.
Not that it really matters. On a team where outfielders stop chasing fly balls on a whim, you're just gonna find another way to lose once push comes to shove.
It would be nice to say that things couldn't get any worse than they are right now, but no one actually became violently ill during this week's games. So we still have that to look forward to in the 149 games to come this season.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
