Suffering through the Los Angeles Dodgers' brutal four-game sweep of the New York Mets last week was enough to shock me into the realization that this could be a losing season for the Amazin's. Of course, any reasonable human being would have concluded this long ago, but I like to think that fandom requires logic as only one part of its greater, more complex whole.

Thus, I--as, I imagine, many Mets fans have--have nursed the feeling that this season still holds promise. After all, my first favorite baseball player, Jose Reyes, is back and speedy as ever. Asdrúbal Cabrera can clearly play a mean second base. Yoenis Céspedes and his clutch-ness is locked in for years to come. Jay Bruce is raking and has, in a wildly unpredictable way, become the face and voice of the Mets' locker room. Curtis Granderson has kicked his early slump and blasted ahead to a .300-plus batting average in the second half of the season, according to a recent SNY report. Lucas Duda is at first and Wilmer Flores continues to flirt with .300 and Michael Conforto has made good on his two-years-ago potential and Rene Rivera continues to be a beast.

It should be an exciting time to be a fan of the Mets!

Instead, we've been treated to nightly pre- and post-game reviews of defensive inadequacies and an ever-lengthening list of injuries that threatens to derail a once-promising season but also promises to foster a parade of new faces to meet and learn about and allow us to be inspired to hope. The Mets' starting rotation has been hit hard by injuries, and with Robert Gsellman leaving tonight' game against Miami, there is only one original Mets starter who has not been hit by the injury bug--though I can't bring myself to mention his name here, for fear of courting superstitious disaster.

This all brings me to an essential question: what is fandom, and what are its demands?

In the simplest sense, being a fan should mean rooting for your team despite their place in the standings and being proud to support the players and, overall, the team that you've either grown up watching or grown to love. Taken another way, however, there are reasonable expectations of any major league team, and when they fail to meet them, shouldn't fans have a right to indignation and profanity? There is perhaps something healthy in this, as in expressing frustration and venting through sports in a way that is untenable or inappropriate in everyday life. Still, how much of a fan are you if you only support your team when it is winning. That seems awfully convenient...

My takeaway tonight--after watching the Mets lose Gsellman to a hamstring injury and lose the game due to a number of reasons--is that baseball fandom is complicated and demands a commitment of the spirit that is challenging. Unlike football fans, baseball fans don't receive a retrieve until next week. Instead, we have a mere 24 hours before our favorite team takes center stage once more for better or for worse. This is frustrating and maddening, yet it is also exciting and promising.

So, yes, I choose to hope: the Mets couldn't beat the Marlins tonight, but they might tomorrow and the next night. And if they can, then they could work their way back to .500. And yet, that doesn't matter as much as it could or should, because whether they do or don't recover this season, I'm going to keep on watching and rooting and that has to mean something in and of itself.

Doesn't it?

While it's much too soon to go throwing around words like "fate" and "too late" given April has yet to give way to May, I couldn't help myself. I'm a Mets fan, after all, and I have been since the early 2000s. I watched the Mets be mediocre since before I really understood what a major league baseball team could be or should be, or even what a full season entails. As a Mets fan, I know all too well the self-deprecating, self-identifying "I'm a Mets fan" talk that serves both to bond you with other Mets fans and to protect you from the criticism or pity of fans of those other teams -- you know, the winning ones.

But, as a Mets fan, I also know the joyful and hopeful "Let's go Mets!" chants that were answered in 2015 with resounding success across a season and up to somewhere early in the World Series of that year. I remember that there was a lot of winning early, though there were certainly dry spells and losing streaks. A glance back at the season (with the assistance of baseball-reference.com) reveals that most of the Mets' losing streaks in 2015 occurred outside of divisional play. While I'm not entirely convinced that divisional play is as important as some would suggest it is -- after all, wins and losses are counted the same regardless of the opponent -- I can't deny that dominance in one's division carries a sort of weight that influences fan perception, broadcaster commentary, and even team morale. The 2015 Mets had that dominance, and they had it to start the season.

The good news for 2017 Mets fans is that we may have forgotten: the first serious rough patch for the 2015 Mets came in the last few days of April and into May. Starting April 27th, they lost two of three to the Marlins followed by three of four to the Nationals. By mid-May, they had weathered a five game losing streak, and after winning the next three straight, they lost five of six games between May 19th and May 24th. After a seven game losing streak in late June, they dropped below .500 for the first time since their fifth game of the season back in week one. In short, the 2015 Mets knew hard times and came out on top despite it all.

Now for the important question: how is this relevant to the 2017 Mets?

Well, it's not all good news. For one thing, the eleven game winning streak that the 2015 Mets put together in April served to sustain them as a winning team when the losses came. This year, there's been no such winning streak, and it's becoming difficult to imagine one coming any time in the near future.

Still, I would argue that there's more good news than one might expect, save for one troubling element. First, the good news: the 2017 Mets are -- despite the rapidly growing list of injured players -- as good and better than the team of two years ago. If Yoenis Céspedes can avoid the disabled list and Michael Conforto can stay hot, the outfield is better than it was then. With the loss of Lucas Duda and David Wright, Jay Bruce (both offensively and defensively) and Jose Reyes (for now, only defensively) are hardly downgrades. To continue to underrate Asdrúbal Cabrera as a shortstop would be to court madness. And even though Neil Walker probably won't -- and shouldn't have to -- live up to Daniel Murphy's otherworldly stats, he is a steady presence at second base and has hit a couple home runs in the past two days that kept the Mets in the game despite the ultimately disappointing outcome. Finally, if Travis d'Arnaud can avoid the disabled list, he has shown signs of heating up in the big way fans were beginning to worry he could not.

So, if the team is comprised of an outstanding and promising group of players, then what is that troubling element, that nagging concern? There is, of course, the losing record (8-10 after Sunday's loss to the Nationals), though that's not it. It's not the list of injuries, and it's not Jose Reyes' slump. These are not insignificant, though it is the intangible consequence of these accumulated frustrations that concerns me.

To me, the main concern when the Mets return after an off day on Monday is the energy surrounding the team. As the frustrations mount, will they persevere and find their swagger again? If not swagger, then will they find motivation in the losses -- both to their record and to their lineup -- to rise up and prove their ability despite and/or in spite of the aforementioned frustrations? This is what I'll be looking for on Tuesday.

As a final note, I should admit that I did not hold this semi-optimistic outlook during or even just after Sunday's game. However, when dawn breaks on Monday, I'm still a Mets fan, and as Tug McGraw said and as Mets fans have long held: ya gotta believe.