If you weren’t aware that Alex Cobb finished the 2024 season with the Guardians, well, you might not be alone. In his age-36 season, the veteran right-handed pitcher found himself on the injured list for the vast majority of the year and got traded to Cleveland at the deadline.
Having recovered from hip surgery early in the season, Cobb had a nerve issue in his shoulder followed by a blister issue, all of which combined to set back his return to the major league mound rather significantly. He wound up making three starts for Cleveland in the regular season and two in the postseason, and the results were mixed.
Entering his age-37 season, Cobb isn’t one of the more exciting options on the free agent market when it comes to building out the Mets’ 2025 rotation. But where David Stearns saw opportunity to buy relatively low in bringing in Luis Severino and Sean Manaea last offseason, perhaps there’s similar appeal to Cobb now.
With the Giants in 2022 and 2023, Cobb threw a total of 301.0 innings with a 3.80 ERA and a 3.41 FIP. Among the 74 pitchers who threw at least 250.0 innings across those two seasons, he ranked 42nd in ERA and 22nd in FIP. It’s worth pointing out that he fared far better in terms of FIP in 2022 than he did in 2023, but he was a pretty solid starting pitcher who occasionally flashed brilliance.
Considering the Mets’ need to bring in a minimum of two starting pitchers—and ideally three—a pitcher like Cobb could make sense for the middle-to-back of the team’s rotation. The median crowdsourced contract for Cobb over at FanGraphs is a one-year, $10 million deal. That’s just shy of the aforementioned deals that the Mets inked with Severino and Manaea for the 2024 season and sounds pretty reasonable given the circumstances.
