Tigers right-hander Alex Cobb will be pulled off his rehab assignment and shut down for a week. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press spoke to manager A.J. Hinch about the situation. Hinch framed this as a way to restart Cobb’s rehab window. A rehab assignment for a pitcher comes with a 30-day maximum. Cobb began his rehab assignment July 29th and was coming to the end of his 30 days. A player can finish a rehab assignment and start a new one but, per MLB rules, must be shut down for seven days in between.
In essence, this is the Tigers kicking the can down the road on Cobb again. Detroit signed him to a one-year, $15MM deal in the offseason but he has yet to throw a pitch for the big league club, mostly due to issues in his hips. He had missed a decent chunk of 2024 recovering from left hip surgery, but then his right hip was inflamed in spring training 2025. The right hip issue put him on the injured list to start the year.
Since then, he’s been battling issues in both hips and struggling to get back on the mound. He started a rehab assignment in late May but that only lasted three appearances before he was shut down again. He started a new rehab assignment about a month ago but he seemingly struggled to pitch for more than about two innings at a time. Last week, the club decided to pivot Cobb to a relief role to see if that could help him get back to the majors. The soreness in his hips has continued.
The tricky part of the calculus is that the Tigers are playing meaningful baseball. They have a huge lead in the Central division but have a tighter fight for a bye through the first round of the playoffs. Just because Cobb is a respected veteran and earning a decent salary, doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed a role as the games become more important.
“I think the goal is to have as many productive players as we can and guys that can help us win,” Hinch said this week. “If that’s the case and it lines up, then great. We want him to be good. We want him to help us win. We want him to be a part of this because we think that the stuff has been pretty good throughout the summer. He just hasn’t been able to bounce back as much. It’s not just trying to be the good guy and try to give him a platform to pitch again. That’s not been the motivation. It’s because when he has flashed that stuff over the last handful of outings, it’s been pretty good. He hasn’t always been able to retain it, or hasn’t been able to bounce back, and that’s what we’re working towards. We’re going to go day by day. This isn’t something that we’re looking at over the course of weeks. We know how much of the season is left. We know what he has to accomplish to be one of the best 13 pitches that we have — or 14 when September rosters expand. We’re just going to continue to evaluate.”
In other news from Detroit, Hinch said this week that outfielder Parker Meadows will begin a rehab assignment shortly, per Chris McCosky of The Detroit News. “He will have a schedule and we’re going to go day-to-day to see how much activity he has and how much he can handle,” Hinch said. “Which is good. We need him out there playing the field and we need him running around freely.”
Injuries have limited Meadows to just 38 games this season. A nerve issue in his right arm held him back during spring training and into the regular season. He was reinstated from the IL in early June but then a quad strain put him back on the shelf at the end of July. Those issues seemingly prevented him from getting in a groove. He hit just .200/.270/.296 in between those IL stints, a far cry from last year’s .244/.310/.433 line.
Meadows is a strong defender in the outfield, so he can be a useful player with a bit more offense than he’s shown this year. For now, the Tigers are using Riley Greene, Wenceel Pérez, Javier Báez, Jahmai Jones and Kerry Carpenter in the outfield. The return of Meadows could perhaps lead to Carpenter sticking as the designated hitter more often or more infield time for Baez.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
We better hope the offense goes crazy in October be the pitching is getting scary.
Hopefully Urquidy can make an impact once he’s ready, starting rotation definitely needs help
Urquidy has only been pitching 1-2 innings at a time so he probably won’t be a true starter if he comes up though Cobb was only going 3 so the rotation we have is probably set. I wouldn’t have minded giving Gipson-Long a longer look but Morton has been ok I guess.
It’s all in the hips. It’s all in the hips.
Hips don’t lie
He’s got the hippy hippy shakes.
What a waste of $15M…way to go Scott Harris
I know Verlander hasn’t been great but at least he could have pitched for us and sold some jerseys!
I never understand how pitchers with shaky 2024’s like walker buehler or max scherzer or this guy can have such a high AAV because all they do is either have a 5.00 era or don’t play (or both)
Because the going rate for even mediocre/bad starting pitching has gotten out of control the past few winters
Well, one big mistake. It is not Cobb’s fault. I understand that he had planned to retire at the end of last year, but the Tigers waved a big paycheck in front of him and, channeling his inner Henry V, he said once more into the breach. For $15,000,000 annual paycheck, I’d come out of retirement and go back to work. As would most of the commenters here would do so as well.
Cobb has been a walking member of the injured list for a few years now. That’s $15,000,000 that Harris and Co. flushed down the toilet that could have been held to try and re-sign Skubal. Oops.
A smarter use of that money would have been to spend the major league minimum that Trevor Bauer was willing to sign for. He’s healthy, would have more wins by now than Flaherty and Cobb combined, and given his history, he would have had to behave like a Trappist monk so as to avoid any media coverage other than the sports’ page of the Detroit area papers and electronic media..
Oh well. Normally this is a “learn your lesson” moment. With the Tigers’ front office, I am not so sure about that.
Bauer hasn’t been very good this yr in Japan. He would have been better than Cobb but that’s not saying much lol.
No, just no! Cobb signing did not work out, but give it a rest regarding Bauer. He is a pariah and he will never pitch in the majors again. No team wants the negative PR and plenty of pitchers who could deliver as good or better than Bauer without the headaches that come with him.
“Cobb has been a walking member of the injured list for a few years now.”
Coming soon on AMC:
The Walking Injured List
Why not? They already have the bats…
This basically means Cobb won’t pitch for the Tigers this year.