Ex-Met Update Spinoff

[Guest Edgy DC]

Here's a hooray-for-Perlozzo story with an angle on his tenure with the 1983 Lynchburg Mets. I spin it off here because the reporter shares my fascination with that team.

If you follow that Lynchburg link, you'll see a ridionculous stat line for Dave Cochrane. It's got to be bogus. No way does a guy steal 146 bases while putting up a sub-.300 on-base percentage (and 42 of his 117 hits were for extra bases). In fact, I'm pretty sure Lenny Dykstra's 105 stolen bases that year were a Carolina League record.

The same maniac must have typed in Cochrane's whole profile because, if you click on his name, you see him lighting up the lower minors year after year with record-smashing steal totals with single-digit walk figures.

[MFS62]

It looks like someone may have transposed some columns(maybe walks and strikeouts with HR and RBI). I don't remember him being that good a prospect. With numbers like those, there would have been more written about him at the time he was putting them up.

Later

[Guest Edgy DC]

Any collectors out there have a Dave Cochrane rookie card that includes his minor-league numbers?

[MFS62]

When I get home, I'll see if I can locate my Sporting News Baseball Guides from that era. If I can find them, I'll let you know if the numbers are correct.

[MFS62]

Cochrane's stats:
Unfortunately, the Baseball Register didn't show SB in those days. But this is from the 1986 edition:

'85 - mostly on DL - .223, 4 HR, 20 RBI
'84 - (120 game season).267, 22HR, 77 RBI
'83 - (120 game season).263, 25HR, 102 RBI*
'82 - (70 game season) - .301, 22HR, 62 RBI
so it looks like those numbers were correct.

He was traded for Tom Paciorek.

He played 3B and ss and had 25-35 error seasons.
The one year I have his SB, he was 17SB and 16 CS
I was right in guessing some columns were transposed. The numbers shown in your link for his SB totals are really his strikeout totals.

Later

[Theoldmole]

Paciorek did a good job for the Mets.

[seawolf17]

Plus he had crazy hair and wore his batting helmet weird, which to my ten-year-old mind was cool.