Rozner: Chicago Cubs have earned their first-half record

Daniel Vogelbach was trending Friday night on Twitter.

That pretty much sums up your 2019 Chicago Cubs season.

It's apparently all the proof necessary that Theo Epstein is bad at his job - and maybe a clue that it's time to fold the franchise.

The Marx Brothers are what passes for commentary these days, baseball entirely new to the fringes, where a 162-game season is a mystery.

After another ugly road trip, the Cubs head into the break at 47-43 and in first place, a half-game up on the Brewers following an inconsistent and exceedingly mediocre first half.

Welcome to the major leagues, where baseball is hard and good teams have ugly months when they lose players to injury, get uneven performances from stars and players disappear entirely.

This is not unusual, even for a team that's made the playoffs four straight years, been to three straight NLCS and won a World Series while averaging 97 victories.

What have you done for me innately.

Epstein may yet raise the temperature, a fairly common ploy when malaise is prevalent, but he knows that's generally short-lived and ineffective relative to getting healthy, throwing strikes and getting on base.

And while meeting the media Saturday night on the South Side, he took a calm approach to what has been a frustrating first half of baseball.

"We're all in this together," Epstein said. "That's sort of one of the hallmarks of this organization. We have each other's backs.

"Anyone who's there to take the credit when things are going great should be there as a leader to take responsibility when we're in any of our downturns."

And then Epstein stepped up and owned the Cubs' record in 2019.

"Ultimately, everything in baseball operations is my responsibility," he said. "If we're not getting the results we should be getting, in every meaningful way it begins and ends with me. If we're underperforming, that's absolutely on me."

There has never been a pair better than Epstein and Joe Maddon in team history - no small matter - but it doesn't mean they're immune from mistakes.

They've both made plenty, and when the Daily Herald's Bruce Miles asked Epstein if he was in a slump, Epstein gobbled it up.

"Yeah, I think front offices go on hot streaks, and they can go in slumps," Epstein said. "Sometimes, you go in stretches where it's just like the team on the field.

"You go through a Murphy's Law period where everything that seemingly can go wrong, goes wrong, and you lose a few games. Same thing with front offices."

But the boss did not place the blame on the manager.

"Joe's been remarkably effective and consistent. I'm not going to sit here and say this is on him," Epstein said. "I look at it collectively. I think my job is to put him in a position to succeed. His job is to put the players in a position to succeed.

"When we're not succeeding, you can't point at any one thing. We're collectively not getting the job done right now.

"If you want to look at it - going back to the second half last year and now the first half this year - it hasn't been as clean as we'd like, as heads-up as we'd like, maybe not as intense as we'd like with our style of play."

That's not exactly absolution for Maddon, but Epstein isn't about to hand the manager his hat when there's plenty of responsibility to go around.

"Joe's got a natural curiosity. He's got a growth mindset," Epstein said. "He may give off this air of consistency in some ways, but in other ways he's trying new things every day to try to fix things and get it locked in."

And then he took a comfortable jab at the inconsistency of those who play judge, jury and executive hitting coach.

"I like nothing more than sitting back when the team's playing well, the manager's on a roll, and you guys are all talking about this is the best job he's ever done. That makes me feel good," Epstein said. "What was that, like two months ago, right? Now the team's struggling so there's going to be speculation in the other direction.

"That doesn't make me feel as good. I feel like I need to do my job well to make him look good. He needs to do his job well and make the players look good. We all help each other out.

"No one is satisfied. We feel like we didn't have the first half we were capable of having, but we're really optimistic. I like the partnership that we have. I like the organization we have.

"We need to get to those answers we know we're going to get to pretty soon so we can start playing winning baseball."

To believe they can't compete with the best teams in baseball right now makes absolute sense, given the way they've played three months of baseball, but with three months to go, much can change for the Cubs and those they're chasing.

It was just a month ago that the Cubs were 10 over and optimism was off the charts.

The rampant ravings and wacky overreactions only serve to remind that this - the best stretch in franchise history - will not last forever.

In the meantime, maybe don't fold the franchise quite yet.