Cobb delivers in 2-1 win over Mets
innings, just six solid innings of two-hit, one-run ball to represent his best start in Orioles colors.
The right-hander who is asked to be both a future asset and a present-day contributor began to look like both, albeit against a sputtering Mets offense that matched the struggles of the Orioles (18-41) step for step.
Perhaps Cobb (2-7) was motivated by the two runs the Orioles’ offense got him early. Trey Mancini, Adam Jones and Manny Machado each singled inside Jason Vargas’ first 12 pitches, with Machado’s slow roller up the middle scoring Mancini and a sacrifice fly by Danny Valencia scoring Jones.
Or perhaps it was the idea that this offense, which doesn’t score often, might not again for him. Either way, Cobb fanned two batters in a quick first, worked around a two-out walk in the second and was staring down the possibility of a short outing after using 41 pitches on the first seven batters he faced.
But Cobb buckled down for a nine-pitch third and an 11-pitch fourth to ensure that wouldn’t be the case, using his season’s crispest collection of secondary pitches — largely his split-change and curveball — to match a season high with Trey Mancini singles in the eighth inning, one of just three Orioles hits after the two-run first. eight swinging strikes and five strikeouts through four frames.
The first hit he allowed came on a pull shot by Jay Bruce down the first base line that clunked off Chris Davis’ glove. Bruce went to third on a double by Kevin Plawecki and scored on a sacrifice fly by pinch hitter José Bautista, though Cobb left Plawecki at third by winning a 10-pitch battle with Amed Rosario for his sixth strikeout of the night.
Brandon Nimmo swung through a two-strike fastball for the third time to account for Cobb’s seventh strikeout to open the sixth, and he made quick work of Asdrubal Cabrera and Michael Conforto in his last action on the mound.
The start was refreshingly devoid of all the peculiarities of Cobb’s first nine starts — no hard contact, no brutal batted-ball luck, no blow-up innings. Instead, the most bizarre part was when Cobb hit for himself in lieu of a pinch hitter with two outs in the top of the seventh, grounded out and was still pulled for Mychal Givens to open the bottom of the inning.
Givens, Richard Bleier and Brad Brach combined to post zeros in the final three innings to ensure that the Orioles wouldn’t rue their lack of runs the rest of the way. After their first three batters singled to open the game, the Orioles had only three more hits and a pair of walks.
They signed a pitcher of Cobb’s caliber to make slim leads like this stand up. On Tuesday, he delivered.