Alex Cobb and the Orioles were a match made of convenience when he signed late in spring training in 2018, the pitcher whose market never developed as he hoped and the team that could say the same about its starting pitching.
He wasn’t unique in that sense when it came to last decade’s Orioles, whose scatter-shot pitching development methods and unfortunate trades left them without much in the way of homegrown big league starters. That led them to commit $50 million to Ubaldo Jiménez in 2014, $22 million to Yovani Gallardo in 2016 and $16 million to Andrew Cashner and $57 million to Cobb in the spring of 2018.