NEW YORK — Alex Cobb’s season has ended after three regular season starts and two short postseason outings. The Cleveland Guardians replaced the 37-year-old on their ALCS roster with pitcher Ben Lively.
Cobb dealt with an acute lower back strain during his Game 1 start at Yankee Stadium, from which he exited in the third inning. It’s a fitting, frustrating end to Cobb’s injury-riddled 2024 season. He spent the first part of the year recovering from offseason hip surgery. Then, shoulder trouble and a blister on his right index finger delayed his return to the mound for the San Francisco Giants.
They traded him to the Guardians at the end of July and he debuted for Cleveland in August, but more finger woes prevented him from pitching after Sept. 1. He worked his way back to start Game 3 of the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers and lasted only three innings. He experienced a similar fate on Monday, when the Guardians fell to the Yankees 5-2. Cobb, battling back spasms and hip tightness that he said still flares up on occasion since the surgery, allowed five hits and issued three walks in 2 2/3 innings.
Cobb would be ineligible to pitch should the Guardians advance to the World Series.
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Lively hasn’t pitched since the final weekend of the regular season. He signed with the Guardians last winter and expected to fill a long relief role. But when Shane Bieber needed Tommy John surgery and Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen struggled to keep their spots in the rotation, Lively became a steady arm for Stephen Vogt’s outfit.
On Monday afternoon, Vogt explained the club’s decision to omit Lively from the team’s playoff roster by saying: “Ben had been phenomenal for us all year, super consistent. Just looking at the series and everything, we had to make a difficult decision. Leaving Ben off was not easy. Ben knows how we feel about him. It was one of those things that, when we got down to the last decision, it’s what felt right.”
Lively posted a 3.81 ERA in 29 starts for the Guardians during the regular season.
(Photo of Alex Cobb: Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
