For those of us who are life-long Mets fans, it has been painful to see them self-destruct in September. However, the eternal optimist in me is not yet thinking of next season. Instead I am already enjoying the thought of a calm month of October not spent staying up late in London hunched over my SlingBox player, stressed to the max.
The baseball season is so long that I now realize I have allowed modern management practice to supplant my earlier and simpler love for the game. I follow the Mets on an "exceptions basis" as I would any large project. I pay a lot of attention at the beginning and end of the project, monitor several metrics like won-loss record and number of games lead in between, and only really pay attention when these stats show that some pre-set threshold has been breached. As with any good project, I also do the occasional "deep dive" by either attending a mid-season game or reading a commentator's analysis.
For the 2007 Season, it is clear that the project has died - I think I will just go back to enjoying the game next year.