I get that it's enough for them to hang on how good the team SHOULD be and hopefully will be in the second half, as the Cubs did last year. But for a lot of us, that doesn't make the long stretch where they do struggle/are inconsistent to be any less annoying to sit through. There's this repeated response that any thinking along the lines of, "why is this good team playing better" is basically just parroting r_mack. Or that being frustrated with them again getting off to an up and down first half is somehow over the line, as if, something that was really annoying the previous season shouldn't be annoying the very next season simply because it happened before. Definitely frustrating and annoying but also not at all unusual for good teams to play extended mediocre stretches. As long as you don't lose perspective of that, be as annoyed as you want. Yeah, it should be obvious that most of us gripers aren't acting like this is a genuinely terrible team. It's like, I dunno, getting a flu shot...the end result will ideally be very good, but actually getting the shot always sucks no matter what, and there's someone there trying to tell me that getting jabbed with a needle is something I shouldn't be bugged by because it should prevent me from getting really sick.