I start and stop lots of blog posts before you see the magic that appears on the screen before you. I get these ideas and then I abandon them for no apparent reason, or I'll have a draft saved somewhere and then I'll never finish it. Here's one that I could've sworn that I finished, but I found left unpublished, alone and helpless in cyberspace.

The gist of it was that there were a couple of news articles that came out when Bud Black was first hired about pitchers being dumb by virtue of the fact that few pitchers had gone on to successful careers as managers of baseball clubs.

Catchers on the other hand rule the roost. Catchers are smart and become great managers. Pitchers that are smart and become great managers are few and far between, Tommy Lasorda being notable as one of the successful ones.

I had planned on going through different works of baseball fiction to try to figure out who the "dumb" one was.

The list I had in my mind back in 2007:

1. Roy Hobbs from the Natural - Dumb and naive as a pitcher. Wiser as a hitter. Does something dumb shortly after throwing a pitch in practice.
2. Nuke LaLoosh from Bull Durham - Dumb as a rock. His catcher? Super-ass wise.
3. Kit Keller from A League of Her Own - Oh sweet Kit. Not as hot/smart/talented/wise as her older sister Dottie who also happens to play catcher and basically run the Rockford Pitchers while Jimmy Dugan was snorting coke in the men's room. Incidentally, the other starter for the peaches was Ellen Sue Gotlander who was a former Miss Georgia. Just saying.
4. Henry Wiggen from the Mark Harris novels (notably Bang the Drum Slowly) - Sure. He's an author and seems bright enough, but who truly learns from who when catcher Bruce Pearson is diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease? Who learns from who?
5. Billy Chapel from For Love of the Game -  I was planning vaguely saying something about Clear the Mechanism, but I'm not sure what. Isn't it weird that Sam Raimi directed that movie? Sam Raimi did Evil Dead.
6. Kenny DeNunez from the Sandlot - I have no idea where I could've gone with that one.
7. Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn from Major League franchise - That one's a gimme.

And so on and so on.

I give it to you now in all its glory, after the jump. Fair warning, there's not a whole lot there and I probably should've just made the list off the top of my head and pushed publish back in 2007. But this is what happens. Enjoy!

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Last year I predicted the Padres would finish with 90 wins and the NL West title.  I was right that it would take 90 wins to capture the NL West, I just picked the wrong team.  Instead we ended with 89 Wins and a third place finish.

A couple Gaslamp Ballers picked the correct number of wins but nobody got both the place and correct record.

A lot of the predictions were really vague in the last couple of years.  I want exact predictions.  Give me the total number of wins and the place in the division, bare minimum.

Bonus points for those who pick the correct places for all teams in the NL West.  Feel free to make other predictions as well:  World Series Champion, injuries, Wild Cards or whatever else you want.

I want you to really reach down into your psychic core and connect with the future.  Meditate on your prediction then post it.  It's that easy.

Here's my prediction:

Padres 83 Wins / 4th Place

The game starts at 7:05 pm PST.  It will also be televised on Channel 4.

I've been staring at the screen for about 15 minutes with absolutely nothing interesting to write, so you're on your own.

MB over at Friar Forecast points out that voting has started on the Great Clutch Project. So, who's clutch for us? Off the top of my head, I'd say Hairston and Bard. I'm thinking those are guys that show up significantly better in my own mind's loose definition of "clutch" situations. Make your votes and FanGraphs will be tracking the guy that fans vote is the clutch guy for the Padres.

Everybody loves the Lineup Game. Given that Edmonds doesn't look likely for Opening Day, what do you think will be our lineup to start the season? Here's my guess...

Giles
Iguchi
A-Go
Kouz
Hairston (LF)
Gerut (CF)
Khalil
Bard

Mostly because Khalil sucks ass right now. Poor guy. Also, is there a chance that Headley could actually see opening day on the roster?

Let's just play him then. Come on.

I was on the BlogTalkRadio show last night, and let me tell you... I was terrible. I'm not sure why I even do these things, other than I kinda like to embarrass myself because later on, I think it's funny.

True story. The ringtone on my phone is a clip of the song Drive, by the Cars, as performed by Julio Iglesias. What you hear on this video from :20 to about :25 is exactly what happens when somebody calls me:

Why do I have that as my ring tone? It's because I figured there would be times when I'd forget to turn my ringer off while in a potentially embarrassing place (work, class, courtroom, gay bar). When Julio would start singing, I'd turn red in the face, but oh what a laugh I'd have to myself later!

I think you can listen to it here. I should've done the whole thing in a really heavy Filipino accent. I feel so much more comfortable that way.

Are you guys tired of Spring Training? Me too. Seriously, it's taking forever and I'm not sure that I'm learning anything new about the team. I've taken to barely even paying attention to the Spring Training games as we finish out the month.

Nothing surprises me anymore and I can only assume that decisions are being made by people brighter than me. I think we all saw a Jim Edmonds injury coming sooner or later and lo it has come to pass. What I figured that meant was that either Matt Antonelli or Chase Headley would be getting big league action to start the season. It seemed so clear to me, and yet neither Headley nor Antonelli will be around come Opening Day. Rather, we'll get P-Mac, who I still really like, though more in a "buddy who still insists on bringing the beer bong to the dinner party" kind of way. And we'll get Gerut, which is good times, but you know... I was kinda on the "excited about the top prospects" bandwagon.

All of which probably puts me in a poor frame of mind for my Treehouse Fort appearance tonight. Treehouse Fort is the podcast equivalent of Matt Sussman's BlogCritics sports show. I'm going to be breakin' it down with Sussman and Tuffy at the Fort and InjuryRate from FanIQ. Tune in if you'd like.

As a crib sheet, I may sneak looks at No Bias Baseball's division preview. They predict the Padres as 4th, but it's a reasonably thought out prediction. Tough to argue with it, which is also why I want the season to just start already. Gotta start underdoggin' our way to the postseason.

Happy Easter!

Luke Easter, San Diego Padre, March 29, 1949
SanDiegoHistory.org