[Terry D]

Bob Owchinko was a left-hander who spent almost a decade in the majors without ever distinguishing himself very much. Chink played college ball for Eastern Michigan, and the Padres were impressed enough to make him a top draft pick in 1976. During the course of his story about scout Ray Scarborough, Roger Angell got to see Owchinko pitch and talked to him a little. Angell doesn't say so, but Owchinko came off sounding like a rather spoiled and complacent young man who regarded a major league career and success therein as no more than his due. Like most major leaguers Owchinko had been a star all his life and expected to be so in the future, but he soon found out different. His career MLB ERA and H/IP were unimpressive, and his K/BB not much better. Unlike some other players I've examined here, Owchinko did not shine much more in the minors than he did in the bigs. Owchinko had an ugly rookie season for the Padres in 77, but he did improve his ERA some in the next two seasons. Nonetheless, the Padres dispatched him to Cleveland as part of a complicated three-corner deal for Jerry Mumphrey. Chink had a bad year for the Tribe in '80 and was quickly sent on to Oakland. Billy Martin's A's needed left-handed pitching, and Chink became a project for Martin and pitching coach Dick Fowler. Unlike some of the other young A's pitchers, however, Owchinko did not turn his career around under Martin. He and Martin did not get along at all, and after two forgettable seasons for the A's Owchinko was released. He spent '83 in the Pirates chain, then surfaced again as a long reliever for the '84 Reds. At one time strictly a curveball-fastball pitcher, Owchinko was by now throwing about four pitches in his effort to survive. He didn't pitch in the majors in '85 and was lucky to get a free-agent contract for 1986 out of the Expos. The Montreal pitching staff was hit by injuries that year, and while Owchinko's numbers at AAA Indianapolis weren't super he impressed everyone with his hard work and determination. The spoiled young man Angell had met was long gone by now, and the Expos called Owchinko up late in the year. He started three times and went 1-0, 3.60. Not great, perhaps, but pretty OK and certainly better than any of us could do. Along the way to Montreal, Owchinko had earned much unkind notoriety. In 1980 he toured Japan with the Tribe and the Japanese died laughing because "Owchinko" supposedly sounds like "small penis" in Japanese. In Oakland, Owchinko was known as "The Human Batting Tee." After all that, those three good starts in Montreal at the end of his big league career must have been a kind of vindication for Owchinko. A color image of him with the Expos was posted here a long time ago, but it is in fact a photoshop job based on a Topps card, '81 or '83 I think. Here is a pretty fair black and white image from newspapers.com, showing Owchinko pitching against the Pirates.