By Ken Rosenthal
Sep 6, 2024
Suffice it to say that Alex Cobb and Matthew Boyd are experiencing a bit of culture shock with the Cleveland Guardians.
The dugout, it’s just different.
“Lots of chirping,” Cobb said. “They talk a lot of trash. There’s a reaction to every pitch, every night.”
“It feels like a college dugout,” Boyd said. “Guys are loose, giving each other a hard time, the other team a hard time.”
The Guardians are challenging for the best record in the American League with the youngest group of position players and the fifth-youngest group of pitchers in the majors. Their two newest starting pitchers, Cobb, 36, and Boyd, 33, say the vibes are nothing short of invigorating. In turn, they are trying to invigorate the Guardians’ rotation, a trouble spot for the club all season.
Neither was a particularly sexy addition. Neither before joining Cleveland had pitched a major-league inning this season. The Guardians signed Boyd as a free agent on June 29 while he was still recovering from Tommy John surgery. They acquired Cobb from the San Francisco Giants on July 30 while he was still recovering from left hip surgery and shoulder trouble.
Both, however, are now pitching well, joining Tanner Bibee, Gavin Williams and Ben Lively to give the Guardians — dare we say it? — the best version of their rotation thus far. The next starts for Boyd and Cobb, at Dodger Stadium this weekend against the fourth-highest scoring team in the majors, amount to their biggest tests yet.
“Recency bias is easy to fall into,” Cobb said Wednesday. “But we just had a whole turn through the rotation, maybe a little bit more, of guys going out and dominating. If we continue to live up to our potential, there sure doesn’t look like there are many holes in that rotation.”
For the Guardians, a better performance from their starters is critical. Their bullpen leads the majors in ERA. Six of their relievers, though, entered the weekend with 60 or more appearances. Four of them (Hunter Gaddis, Cade Smith, Emmanuel Clase and Tim Herrin) ranked among the top eight in the majors in that category.
This is where Boyd and Cobb enter the equation.
Boyd, who missed time in 2021 and 2022 after undergoing flexor tendon surgery and then had Tommy John in late June 2023, made his Guardians debut on Aug. 13 and has produced a 2.38 ERA in four starts.
Cobb, true to form for a pitcher who has undergone six surgeries and made 14 career trips to the injured list, dealt with one last ailment before debuting on Aug. 9, a blister on his index finger. He encountered difficulty again after only two starts, going on the IL with a fractured nail. But in his return against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday, he carried a perfect game into the seventh and wound up with six scoreless innings.
Both Boyd and Cobb view their tenures with the Guardians almost as gifts, and not only because of the physical hardships they’ve endured. Boyd has appeared in the postseason only once, in 2022 with the Seattle Mariners. Cobb hasn’t pitched in the playoffs since 2013 with the Tampa Bay Rays, when he knocked out Cleveland with 6 2/3 scoreless innings in the wild-card game.
Now they are part of a rollicking club that not only leads the AL Central by four games, but also is tied with the New York Yankees and only a half-game behind the Baltimore Orioles for the best record in the AL.
“I haven’t been part of a team with the amount of energy these guys bring every single night,” Cobb said. “I know that might not sound like much to a lot of fans and people that tune in. But you get into August and September, it’s tough to continue to have that same energy you start off the season with.
“Obviously, winning creates a little bit of added energy. But the way that this team pulls for everybody, it’s been so refreshing. They’re just so young that they don’t know any better. They expect to win every single night.”
Alex Cobb has a 2.76 ERA in three starts for the Guardians. (Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
In a sense, Cobb’s trade to the Guardians brought his career full circle. After the Rays, then known as the Devil Rays, chose him in the fourth round of the 2006 draft, his catchers in his first two seasons of pro ball included Craig Albernaz and Stephen Vogt, the Guardians’ current bench coach and manager, respectively.
Vogt, the Devil Rays’ 12th-round pick in 2007, said Cobb was the first teammate he met at extended spring training in St. Petersburg. The two were soon to depart for Hudson Valley, a short-season team in the old New York-Penn League. Cobb, then 19, three years younger than Vogt, introduced himself while on the phone, standing in the hallway of the team hotel. They were teammates not only that season, but also at Triple A in 2011 and with the Rays in ‘12.
“It’s been really surreal to have him on our team and to be working with him again,” Vogt said.
Cobb, in turn, is tickled that his old teammate now has “the keys to an organization,” and that he, Vogt and Albernaz occasionally find themselves “sitting in a room together just kind of laughing about if they knew what stupid stuff we did in the minor leagues.”
All these years later, Vogt views both Cobb and Boyd as almost ideal additions, bringing veteran presence and combining with the Guardians’ highly regarded pitching instructors — pitching coach Carl Willis, assistant pitching coach Joe Torres and bullpen coach Brad Goldberg — to help the younger starters understand their own strengths.
Veteran presence, though, is most meaningful, perhaps only meaningful, when the veteran performs well. Cobb’s ERA in his three starts with Cleveland is 2.76. In his last outing especially, he felt things starting to click. He could see it in the Pirates’ reactions to the way his stuff was moving.
His goal is to be in midseason form by October.
“Think about 10 years of not winning. It wears on you,” Cobb said. “Other places I’ve been, August and September has been like, when are we going to lose enough games to where the organization gives up? It’s a toxic mindset to have.
“I went to San Francisco after they won 107 games (in 2021). With an expanded postseason, (you think) there’s no way you’re not going to go back to the postseason. And then it just didn’t happen for two years.
“This has been such an amazing opportunity. I’m so thankful to the organization and to Vogter and Alby because I know they had a big hand in bringing me over.
“It’s changed my career, for sure.”
Boyd, like Cobb, had connections in the Guardians organization. Andrew Moore, the team’s Triple-A assistant pitching coach, was three years behind Boyd at Oregon State. Left fielder Steven Kwan, though 6 1/2 years younger, also was an Oregon State alum.
Then there were those who Boyd met after signing with the Giants in 2022. He was recovering from his flexor-tendon surgery then, and never pitched for the team before getting traded to the Mariners. But he became familiar with two members of the Giants’ coaching staff who are now with the Guardians, Albernaz and Kai Correa.
He also made a friend who played no role in his decision to sign with Cleveland, seeing as how he was still with the Giants at the time.
Cobb.
“After my first surgery, I leaned on Alex a lot in San Francisco,” Boyd said. “I had a setback, I wasn’t feeling like I thought I would be feeling. He was a friend and a mentor in that moment, guiding me.”
Boyd returned with the Mariners in Sept. 2022, posting a 1.35 ERA in 10 relief outings, and also made one appearance in the team’s Division Series loss to the Houston Astros. He then rejoined the Tigers, the team that in 2015 acquired him from the Toronto Blue Jays in the David Price trade, on a one-year, $10 million free-agent deal. After only 15 starts, he required Tommy John surgery.
When the current season started, Boyd was an unsigned free agent, rehabilitating at his home in Sammamish, Wash. He coordinated his rehab efforts with his surgeon, Dr. Keith Meister; a former Mariners rehab coordinator, Matt Toth; specialists who worked for his agent, Scott Boras; and physical therapists from his previous team, the Tigers. The Uniform Player’s Contract dictates a team must incur a player’s reasonable medical and hospital expenses for up to two years from the date of initial treatment of an injury.
Boyd spent time with his family, coaching T-ball and his daughter’s softball team. He said it was refreshing to see the trees bloom. And he watched plenty of major-league games, quickly noticing the Guardians were much-improved over last season when they finished 76-86.
“You just knew something special was going on,” Boyd said.
It didn’t take long, however, for the Guardians’ rotation to be depleted by, among other issues, the three-month absence of Williams, the season-ending loss of Shane Bieber and struggles of Triston McKenzie. In a tight market for starting pitching, the Guardians were looking for creative solutions. And Boyd, looking for opportunity, was well aware of the team’s reputation for getting the most out of its pitching.
“Man,” he thought, “that’s where I want to be.”
Boyd agreed to a major-league contract, then began a rehabilitation assignment 16 days after signing. He made five minor-league starts before the Guardians promoted him. In his first two major-league outings, he completed 5 1/3 innings. In his past two, he went six. He said this is probably the best he has felt since 2019.
At the start of last week, the Guardians lost three straight at home to the Kansas City Royals, falling into a first-place tie for the division lead. They then fell behind 5-2 in the seventh inning of the series finale before rallying to win, 7-5. Neither Boyd nor Cobb pitched in the series. But both were impressed by the resiliency of their teammates and the steady hand of Vogt.
“We were down in that fourth game and had every reason to roll over. And man, guys just fought right back. The vibe in the dugout was good all the way through. It was like, ‘We got this.’ There wasn’t any panic or distress. It was, ‘Hey, let’s go do it.’”
The Guardians keep doing it, playing their chaotic brand of “Guards Ball,” but also finding new ways to win. Boyd and Cobb, after all their injuries, all their years of playing for losing clubs, almost can’t believe their good fortune. They tell each other, “We get to be part of this now? They’re letting us be part of what they’ve done all year?”
Boyd said Cobb had perhaps the best analogy, comparing the two of them to kids at an amusement park who suddenly found themselves beating a long wait to get on their favorite ride.
Think of it as their little secret.
“We jumped the line.”
The Athletic’s Zack Meisel contributed to this story
(Top photo of Matthew Boyd: Mike Stobe / Getty Image
