Alex Cobb will seek to continue to torment the Baltimore Orioles — both as an employee and now as an opponent — when he gets the ball Saturday night for the host San Francisco Giants in the second game of the clubs’ three-game interleague series.
The Orioles got the jump on the Giants in the series opener Friday, overcoming a LaMonte Wade Jr. first-pitch bomb into the San Francisco Bay to rally for a 3-2 victory.
Gunnar Henderson’s tie-breaking solo home run in the seventh inning proved to be the difference.
Cobb (4-2, 3.05 ERA) will try to get the Giants even in the series when makes his 14th career start against Baltimore, sandwiching a three-year stint in which he started 41 games as a member of the Orioles.
At this point, his 12-year career can be separated into three phases – the six years in which he went 6-2 against the Orioles as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays, the three years in which he went 7-22 after signing a three-year, $42 million deal with Baltimore, and the past three years, during which he’s faced the Orioles just once, that being in a win for the Los Angeles Angels.
The right-hander has never faced Baltimore while a member of the Giants. All told, the 35-year-old has gone 7-2 with a 2.56 ERA in 13 appearances against the Orioles.
Cobb had been 4-1 with a 2.17 ERA this season for the Giants before his worst outing of the year at Milwaukee last Sunday, tagged for seven runs in four innings in a 7-5 loss.
Coincidentally, his opposing pitcher Saturday — Orioles righty Kyle Bradish (2-1, 3.89) — had a similar experience when he pitched against the team that drafted him on May 17. He responded with an impressive effort at home against the Angels, allowing just one run in 6 2/3 innings of a 3-1 win.
“I made some really good friends that I still talk to,” Bradish said after the game about the Angels, who drafted him in 2018. “So in that aspect, yes (it was emotional), but not really different from any other start.”
Bradish went unbeaten in May — albeit just 1-0 — in five starts, surrendering no more than one run in three of them. He is coming off a 6 2/3-inning effort at home against the Texas Rangers last Sunday in which he allowed just one run but didn’t figure in the decision.
The second-year major-leaguer has never faced the Giants, and the Arizona native hasn’t started a big-league game west of Arlington, Texas.
The 26-year-old will hope for a different start from the one endured by Dean Kremer in Friday’s win. Kremer’s first offering to Wade flew over the right-field wall and sent the stadium into a frenzy when it crash-landed into the San Francisco Bay for the Giants’ 100th “Splash Hit” since the opening of the Giants’ home park on April 11, 2000.
“Our dugout, our team, the ballpark was obviously excited for LaMonte. He felt like the right guy to get that big hit,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said afterward. “It was a no-doubter, so you didn’t have to worry about it hitting the water. It was a good moment for our fans to share with us in the dugout.”
The win was just the Orioles’ third in their past seven games. The Giants have dropped three straight.
–Field Level Media
