SF Giants’ Alex Cobb reaches strikeout milestone vs. Padres: ‘I’ll remember that one’

With a nasty knuckle curve to Xander Bogaerts in the 5th inning, Alex Cobb recorded the 1,000th strikeout of his career.

MEXICO CITY — Alex Cobb remembers his first. And, after reaching a meaningful milestone Sunday against the Padres, he won’t forget his thousandth, either.

With a nasty knuckle curve, Cobb got San Diego shortstop Xander Bogaerts swinging for strike three, his seventh strikeout of the game and the final out of the fifth inning. Twelve years since he punched out his first batter, he did it for the 1,000th time of his career.

“It does mean a lot,” Cobb said. “It’s a lot of years, a lot of work that’s been put into that. It’s an arbitrary number but it looks really pretty and it’s just a moment to look back and reflect.”

Cobb became the 544th player to reach that pretty, arbitrary number, which might sound like a lot. But it’s a fraction of the thousands of arms to throw a major-league pitch over the past 146 years. And for him, it came after the Giants and weighted-ball work helped him, in his mid-30s, throw harder than ever before and rediscover the success from early in his career, after veering astray there in the middle.

“I vividly remember the first one I ever had in the big leagues,” Cobb said. “I’ll remember that one now too. Just to know that all that went on with my career between those two, it’s nice to have moments like that to look back and appreciate your career.”

With his sinker-splitter mix, Cobb’s preferred method was always pitching to contact, inducing easy ground ball outs and not running up his pitch count. He never recorded 150 strikeouts, or averaged at least one per inning over a full season, until last year in San Francisco.

His 28 starts last season were also his most since 2018 and the second-most of his career, as he struggled to stay on the field. There was the line drive that struck him in the head in 2013. There was Tommy John surgery in 2015. There were back problems and the ensuing hip surgery in 2019.

Cobb’s ability was evident early on, pitching his first shutout at 24 years old in his first big league season. In his last start, on Monday, he threw his second, a gap of 12-plus years that was the longest stretch between CGSO No. 1 and CSGO No. 2 besides all but two other pitchers.

Every start he makes this season, he does so as the fifth-oldest pitcher to start for the Giants over the past 10 years. Later this season, he’ll surpass Jeff Samzardzija and become the fourth-oldest, at 35 years old and a growing amount of change. Through six starts, his 2.43 ERA is the best in San Francisco’s rotation.

Perhaps even more impressive was his work Sunday to make it through five innings a mile-and-a-half above sea level, while limiting San Diego to a single home run, after the teams combined for 11 in the same conditions on Saturday. In a way, it was appropriate that it came on his knuckle-curve, even though the pitch ranks third in his arsenal.

At the advice of catcher Joey Bart, that is how Cobb navigated the difficult elements Sunday.

“We pitched completely differently today than we had in the past,” Cobb said. “We went with a lot more curveballs today in zone. He saw that was biting early, went in on a lot of hands, threw some fastballs in on the hands. The biggest thing is to not let them get their hands extended and get their barrels to the ball. We felt like if we could crowd them a little bit it would open up the rest of the plate as well, and it did.”

And, by the way, his memory of that first punchout, 12 years ago in Tampa Bay, was spot on. That one, of course, came on his splitter.

“I was just, like, extremely nervous. It was my debut. It was the first batter I faced,” Cobb said. “I just remember going into that game knowing that I had good stuff in the minor leagues and just wasn’t sure if it would translate to the big leagues.

“I think it was Erick Aybar, lefty for the Angels. Just got a swing and miss on one in the dirt, and at that moment I realized that my stuff plays up here, too. That stood out then. Just walking around the mound thinking that I had just accomplished my dream to pitch in the big leagues and got a strikeout. It’s cool to have those memories.”