In my effort to quote Crash Davis once a week, I was thinking about his adroit analysis of the game this morning while pondering Jeff Niemann’s return from the DL: “Well F— this F—-ing game.  I quit.”

Every time I get my arms around this game, it moves.

Here’s what I knew at 6:30 p.m. last night.

• Alex Cobb was pitching well and had an approach to pitching that fit the Rays;
• Jeff Niemann was pitching poorly when he got hurt and had an approach to pitching that did not fit the Rays;
• Jeff Niemann takes a long time to get his rhythm after a layoff;
• When Jeff Niemann is getting his rhythm, he leaves a lot of pitches up in the zone and those pitches become souvenirs; and
• This is going to be ugly and make me mad that Cobb is not in the rotation.

Then, after watching some of the game, and looking at the rest in the box score, I don’t know what to think.  Niemann pitched well and got out of a huge jam (read TPR’s breakdown of the jam, it is great stuff).  But, in pitching well, he only induced 5 swinging strikes, and allowed 9 fly balls and 3 line drives (one of which was robbed by Longo).

So, was he good or just lucky?  I don’t know.  That is what is driving me crazy.  I didn’t see much of his performance so, I’ll put it to you, what did his stuff look like?  Do I owe Andrew and Joe an apology?  I am so confused.  That’s it, I’m going back to the beach.