The more I poke around Cobb’s numbers, the more I doubt he’s worth his asking price.
Cobb allowed a ton of hard hit balls last year—10th in MLB (min 120 innings, behind Ian Kennedy, Robbie Ray, Jordan Zimmermann, Chris Archer, Derek Holland, Rick Porcello, Erasmo Ramirez, Ricky Nolasco, and Ubaldo Jimenez). Pitchers can pull that off with high strikeout rates (like Ray or Archer), but Cobb’s among league-worst in swinging strike and K rate.
Command and velocity are back to pre-surgery levels, but he threw his once-good changeup far less last year, and is increasingly becoming a two-pitch pitcher, a sinking fastball and curve. He’s no longer an elite groundballer either. That rate has fallen nine percentage points since his last full season (2014).
My worry would be that he’d go full Porcello here, but he wouldn’t have even Porcello’s so-so K rate to bail him out.