Alex Cobb is a better pitcher now at 35 in 2023 than he was at 25 in 2013.
His fastball’s faster. His splitter’s nastier. He strikes out more batters and walks fewer. He’s been more durable — though he likes to proverbially knock on wood whenever the topic of his health comes up.
“He’s looking like he’s in his prime right now,” Cobb’s locker neighbor Alex Wood told KNBR.com.
Cobb’s career is unique, but pitchers’ ability to extend their careers is becoming more possible. There are more resources available for pitchers to thrive into their mid to late 30s than there were even a decade ago.
For Cobb, it took a holistic dedication to his body that truly began after his 2015 Tommy John surgery. He committed to using any tool possible to improve his health and performance — nutrition, weight training, popular pitching lab Driveline — and find the delivery he’s comfortable with.
In the past two seasons, Cobb’s 2.95 FIP ranks eighth among starters with at least 200 innings. He signed with the Giants as a 34-year-old and has been one of the most effective starters in MLB since.
Cobb’s path to becoming an elite starter again wasn’t without setbacks, but it will continue now that he’s back from a mild oblique injury and looks to build on his 3.09 ERA for the Giants in Citi Field on Friday.
“I always knew that I was going to get back to where I was,” Cobb said. “It’s obviously taken a lot longer than I thought it was going to. But I was prepared to get back into this moment, and knew when I did feel the right delivery on the mound, that I wanted to make sure that I did everything physically possible to get better and stronger and stay healthier. I changed a lot over the course of that time. The way I prepare, take care of my body. Really everything, so that once I found my delivery, I could go on a stretch run and try to put together some of the best baseball I’ve played.”
On April 12, Cobb and Clayton Kershaw each took the Oracle Park mound, making up 70 combined years of pitcher.
Kershaw, in his 16th MLB season, was drafted out of high school in the first round of the 2006 draft. Cobb, the 12-year veteran, got picked the same year, also out of high school.
Cobb is a few months older than Kershaw, the three-time Cy Young winner. Every career is different, and many great ones — like Kershaw — have historically found ways to extend their careers. But in the modern game, it seems like more pitchers have been able to hold up into their mid and late 30s than in the past.
Two starts after the Kershaw matchup, Cobb tossed his first complete game shutout since 2012.
“I think particularly for pitchers, the age thing has gone out the window,” Wood said.
As The Athletic’s Eno Sarris wrote in 2021, there are several factors that could be feeding into late-career golden ages for starting pitchers.
Teams are more cautious with younger pitchers’ innings, making veterans who know they can handle a full season’s workload often more valuable.
Experienced pitchers have the benefit of already having worked through the emotional adjustments to break into the bigs.
Although there’s a fascination with velocity, the sportwide obsession with spin rate can apply more to older pitchers in that they can rely less on a fastball and more on their offspeed pitches that are statistically more effective. Spin ages better than speed, and the wisdom aging pitchers have accumulated can help them get more strikeout-prone hitters of the modern game out.
“I think when it comes to aging in the game, pitchers have the advantage over hitters,” Cobb said. “It’s not as much of a reaction sport. Reaction time is probably the first thing that goes as you age. We don’t rely as heavily on that. The physical ability — I don’t know why that would go away if I’m continuing to see my strength and conditioning stay the same, my health stay the same. We’ve seen guys like Charlie Morton, Rich Hill, (Max) Scherzer, (Justin) Verlander — a lot of guys have paved the way to show that your career isn’t ending at 35 if you do the right things to maintain your health.”
Before coming to San Francisco, Cobb had a laundry list of injuries in addition to the 2015 Tommy John: hip surgery, a lumbar strain, a concussion from a comebacker, blisters, wrist inflammation, and a blood clot that required surgery.
Many of the injuries were flukey, and they rarely related to one another. Still, he sought answers. He was exhausted by spending so much time on the IL.
Cobb started building strength in his upper body by lifting more weights, learning that the long-held assumption that more muscle mass can lead to higher injury risk doesn’t hold much scientific merit. He did more cardio on the stationary bike instead of running — standard practice for pitchers — because it’s less strenuous. He listened to wellness podcasts and embraced cold-hot therapeutic treatments for recovery.
“When they were younger, they weren’t incentivized to pursue some of these things,” Chris Langin, Driveline Baseball’s director of pitching, said. “When Cobb was 22 to 26, they just went about pitching and how you develop a pitcher much differently than when he was 32 to (35). And his ability to act on it has basically allowed him to get his velocity.”
So much has changed, societally, in modern medicine, and in the baseball world, between when Cobb and Kershaw got drafted to now.
“I’m in on all of it,” Cobb said. “Anything I can do that makes sense, that I feel like when somebody explains to me and I see how that can help.”
When the Giants signed Cobb, he was coming off a 3.76 ERA season with the Angels. That was the first season after he began training with Driveline Baseball, the data-driven performance training program that has grown exponentially since its inception in 2012. His work there is probably the biggest factor in his late-career resurgence, he said.
Cobb found Driveline when they were still only located in Kent, Washington. Their reputation was still gaining notoriety. Much of their clientele was pitchers on the fringe of MLB or those on their last legs trying to hang on for one more year of service time, Langin said.
Cobb, meanwhile, had already pitched nine seasons. He was approaching 1,000 MLB innings and his career earnings were already had eight digits. He didn’t fit the typical profile of someone who needed Driveline, but still viewed it as potentially another way to find an edge.
First with Bill Hezel, who’s now the Angels’ assistant pitching coach, and then with Langin, Cobb worked on arm care, used with Track Man and trained with a regimented program designed to optimize his pitch shapes.
Some pitchers are hesitant to use the motion capture technology that assesses diagnostics. Cobb embraced it. With Driveline, he displayed “remarkable” buy-in, Langin said.
“It’s kind of adapt or die to some degree,” Langin said. “And he’s done more than adapt.”
This year, Cobb’s sinker averages 94.8 mph. In 2012, it sat 90.8 mph (the year before Cobb started at Driveline, his sinker was 92.5 mph). That’s a dramatic increase in velocity for anyone, let alone a pitcher who traditionally should be past his physical peak.
His split-fingered fastball in 2023 has registered a -10 run value — the best in his career. It’s on par with Camilo Doval’s slider as one of the most elite pitches in baseball.
Cobb’s ground ball rate last year and this season are the two highest of his career and ranks second in baseball in that span.
Sometimes when pitchers age well, it’s because they become craftier. They paint the corners more as their velocity declines. They get smarter with their pitch mix. Cobb, a perfectionist, has paired that veteran savvy with improved stuff.
“It just goes to show kind of this evolution and the uniqueness of it,” Langin said of Cobb’s career. “It really looks like this could be 2012 for him right now. And from there, you can almost play his career backwards. That’s how most careers work. His is very unique. When he was younger, obviously performed. And his velocity was lower at the time. But you don’t age 10 years, usually, and pick up three, four ticks of fastball velocity. It’s really cool, it’s really unique. And to what he’s said, he’s obviously been through a ton. And I think you could make an argument his last year and a half of pitching has been his best display.”
Historically, pitchers in their 30s have been bad investments. Anyone who follows the Giants knows this. San Francisco signed Barry Zito to a seven-year, $126 million deal when he was 29 in December 2006. Of course, he had big moments, but Zito never had a season ERA under 4.00.
Driveline, and all the other advancements since Cobb got drafted and now, may be changing the risk-reward calculus with aging pitchers. The sport’s two highest paid players right now are Max Scherzer, 38, and Justin Verlander, 40.
On Friday, Cobb is matching up with Carlos Carrasco. Saturday, Verlander, New York’s $43 million quadragenarian, will take the mound for the Mets.
At least for Cobb, there’s plenty more in the tank than his age might traditionally suggest.
“All I can say is I feel as good as I’ve ever felt,” Cobb said when asked how much longer he can keep this up. “Physically, bouncing back from games, I feel as good as I can.”