I'm going to play devil's advocate, even though I'm with you and I don't 100% buy it.

ENY is overstaffed and their fleet is shrinking despite arrivals of new 175's. This allows them to flow hundreds of pilots without impacting their operations. Line values will come up and upgrades will be regular as pilots flow and the airline shrinks into being adequately staffed. Then, advertising the hell out of all those flows and upgrades will draw new pilots into classes, thus jumpstarting the cycle of hiring/flowing necessary to produce the advertised 2.5/6.

Will it happen? I don't know. I don't think so. But I don't have a crystal ball and I've been wrong before. But I think what I just described is how they would explain it.