Alex Cobb signed a one year, $15 million deal with the Tigers earlier this week. Many Tigers fans were… distressed by Cobb being their team’s potentially biggest signing following a playoff berth. TigersJUK eloquently articulated how he and his fellow fans could be feeling.
All jokes aside, there’s a good chance Cobb still has something left in the tank and that’s more than you can ask for when signing a pitcher for significantly less than others are being offered in the same free agent market.
Here, I’m going to talk about who Cobb is as a pitcher, what the Tigers might see in him, and how the move impacts his outlook for fantasy baseball.
How Good is Alex Cobb?
Durability rather than ineffectiveness has often been Cobb’s bugaboo. He hasn’t thrown 160 innings in a single season since all the way back in 2017 and missed nearly all of 2024 after undergoing surgery on his left hip.
He’s also missed time for his back, neck, groin, fingernail, and shoulder over the last few seasons. That’s a true laundry list of ailments for a 37-year-old and it’s unlikely the Tigers signed him to be an innings-eater type.
Yet, Cobb did throw 301 innings over his two seasons with the Giants and performed well overall with a 3.80 ERA, 3.48 SIERA, 22.1 K%, and 6.3 BB%. His ground ball rate was also an astounding 59.4% those two years, in line with his 61.2 GB% in a small sample last season.
The Tigers have proven to be creative with their pitchers’ workloads and that version of Cobb – with slightly fewer innings – would be an effective and valuable piece.
How Good can Cobb be
The question is, can Cobb be as good as he was two years ago? He logged just 22 innings with the Guardians last season across five starts between the regular and postseason. Without much to work off of, he did show some traits and tendencies that tell me there’s still a solid pitcher here.
First off, it’s monumentally important that Cobb made it back at all and was entrusted with two playoff starts. Missing the entire season with his combination of injuries and the potential for an irregular offseason would’ve crushed his market and left us with plenty of doubt for his future.
With that, his velocity was back to its 2023 level in those playoff starts. They were abbreviated though – only 41 and 65 pitches, respectively – so it shouldn’t be surprising that Cobb could dial it up there.
However, his fastball sat above than 94 MPH in his last regular season start as well and he had more than a month layoff between that start and the playoffs because of all things, a fingernail issue. There should be some comfort that Cobb’s velocity isn’t falling sharply.
Past that, the Guardians seemed to help Cobb manipulate the shape on his splitter a bit. That pitch works as Cobbs’ de facto primary pitch with nearly a 40% usage rate over his last three seasons and it’s grossly important to his game.
They dropped his arm angle from 41° to 36° and slightly tilted his release of the pitch away from his body. That resulted in his splitter having more drop and less run while holding steady around 90 MPH.
Stuff+ loved these changes as its grade jumped up from a 78 to 123. The pitch always graded out around a 115 Stuff+ before cratering in 2023, so perhaps that single year grade should be taken with a grain of salt while also recognizing the pitch has still taken a legitimate step forward.
Cleveland almost always finds a way to help their pitchers and the gains Cobb’s splitter made with his new arm angle along with a full bounceback of his velocity probably makes him a bit underrated. As long as he can stay somewhat healthy.
How Does Cobb fit on the Tigers
The Tigers became famous late last season for basically having just one starting pitcher in their pursuit of a playoff spot. It worked, but was obviously not a sustainable plan.
Cobb will now join Tarik Skubal at the top of this rotation along with Reese Olson and Casey Mize as they return from injuries. Then there’s super-prospect Jackson Jobe who will reportedly be a “mainstay” in their rotation at some point this season.
That’s five guys right there with Kenta Maeda, Matt Manning, Brant Hurter, Keider Montero, Sawyer Gibson-Long, and Ty Madden as depth.
It’s clear Cobb has a rotation spot all to himself while the Tigers also have built in depth to be ready for his inevitable trip(s) to the injured list. That’s a comfortable place for Cobb to be from a fantasy perspective.
Lastly, it should be noted that Scott Harris is the President of Baseball Operations in Detroit. He was also the Giants’ General manager when they signed Cobb back in 2022. He’s known Cobb, worked with Cobb, and wanted Cobb back on his team.
Conclusions
While not flashy, I wouldn’t be surprised if Cobb threw around 130 innings this season with an ERA in the high threes. He’s a great target in early draft-and-hold leagues with an ADP in the late 600s behind pitchers like Colin Rea, Griffin Canning, and Landen Roupp.
He’s a fine pitcher in a great park with a surefire rotation spot, health notwithstanding. Anything short of multi-month stay on the injured list means he will most likely return positive value at this cost.