Yeah. There are some guys that we can all root for. I'd almost take Livo off that list with whats come out the past few months, between the Feds and him paying for some weird crap. Almost. And in 2005, I never, ever, ever missed going to a game he pitched in person I loved him so much.
Shark, Zimmermann, Ramos... That's pretty much it for me. My point wasn't that there are zero to cheer for. But compare it to years past. The funky dance when we had our backup catcher batting. Willie Harris, Alberto Gonzalez. These are freaking bench guys, and they were loved and fun to watch. We don't even have anyone with a tenth of that. In our starting lineup! That's more my point. Nix, Bixler. Ankiel. Stairs. LaRoche. Werth. Gorzelanny. Marquis, to some extent. Rodriguez. Half our bullpen.
The few remaining guys, Balester and such, are in AAA. I'm not talking about performance at this point, just that rooting for factor. The fan factor. The beloved favorite factor. Guys like Dunn, Willie Harris, etc. Even when they sucked, as Harris often did, he was a big fan favorite. You aren't hearing people going wild when anyone in our lineups come up to bat anymore. Used to be you'd hear it all the time for a ton of different players. This just isn't a likable team, guys with names known across the league, or guys that make a name for themselves. We've got a bunch of career AAAA castoffs who are just ballplayers and not guys that win the fans over. Comprising a roster of people like that really damns the team and hurts them, and is further proof for me Rizzo is clueless. You need guys who can play, but you also need guys who fans can root for. You need that "it" factor this team doesn't have. For some reason, Werth I figured a shoe in for this. And yet he isn't... The fans haven't really even taken to him. When you pay someone that much money and the fans don't embrace the player, that's not good.
You add all that to the performance of this team. A historically bad offensive team, markedly worse than even our worst 100+ loss seasons, and it's just a godawful, unwatchable, uninspired, unenjoyable clusterfreak. But I didn't mean to say there are zero guys we enjoy cheering for. Livo, Shark, Zimmermann, Ramos. Four active players. Desmond and Espinoza are great, but they haven't won the fans over and miss that "it factor" as far as I can tell. Four players, compare that to other years... That's just a huge problem, and that's aside from performance. Considering our record, I might almost go so far as to say that when it comes to watchability, enjoyment and future attendance, it's an even bigger problem right now. Assuming we don't keep going 1-7 every eight games and perform around .500 as we had been, despite hitting .225 as a team.