If you prefer that whole reading thing and you haven’t been visiting Echo from the Buttes this week, here’s what you missed:

• James Harden and the Sun Devils let an historic opportunity slip in Seattle
• Greg and Mark broke down the stretch run for both our hoops teams
• Jason Kipnis and Carlos Ramirez filled in just fine for Wally and Ike
• We wondered aloud if ASU had surpassed UA as the state’s top hoops program
• And we watched videos of Tucsonans traveling to Tempe and the combative Jim Calhoun

That’s all for now. Get ye to Packard Stadium this weekend. And be careful playing tailgate beer pong tournaments. You know, oral herpes. Go Devils!

Don’t miss our preview of the Sun Devils’ baseball season

Sun Devil fans still singing the blues over the loss of Ike Davis and Brett Wallace may have to find a different tune.

At least that was the verdict after Jason Kipnis and Carlos Ramirez mashed a combined seven home runs in four games against admittedly overmatched competition this weekend. (And they didn’t kick off the season with a faux fight!)

Here’s what the Sun Devils’ Nos. 3 and 4 hitters did in a four-game sweep of Wisconsin-Milwaukee over the weekend:

• Kipnis, a centerfielder who this summer turned down a sizeable contract offer from the Padres, batted 12-for-17 (.706) with four doubles, a triple, three home runs and eight RBI.
• Ramirez, a transfer catcher from Chandler Gilbert Community College, batted 8-for-14 (.571) with a double, a triple, four home runs and nine RBI.

The power surge continued in Tuesday night’s 3-1 win over Missouri when Kipnis went yard to lead off the fourth inning.

Kipnis’ fast start did not go unnoticed by Baseball America, which tagged Kipnis in its weekly Golden Spikes Spotlight. In the story, ASU assistant coach Josh Holliday touted Kipnis’ leadership.

Quoth Holliday: “For our young ballclub to have him step up like that and get us going, it created a deep breath for the rest of the guys to play a more relaxed brand of baseball. That’s what you want your older guys to do.”

The competition gets considerably stiffer this weekend as ASU plays Missouri (again), Northern Illinois, Oregon State and Missouri (yet again) on consecutive days Thursday through Sunday.

Five games into the season, Kipnis and Ramirez are obviously on pace to hit more home runs than the 38 clouted by Wallace and Davis last year. We’ll see this weekend if they can maintain the pace.

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• Jason Kipnis’ big weekend (Baseball America)
• Sun Devil baseball season preview (Echo from the Buttes)

1. No more Wally, Petey or Ike. Who’s back on offense?

ASU had 15 players selected in June’s draft—the most ever from a single school. That leaves just three bats from the 2008 squad back this season. Centerfielder Jason Kipnis turned down a sizeable contract offer from the Padres to return to ASU. He’ll headline an offense that also returns rightfielder Matt Newman and Raoul Torrez, moving from second to third in place of Brett Wallace.

2. Ouch. How about on the mound?

Ace right-hander Mike Leake returns to anchor a pitching staff that will have to replace Saturday night starter Josh Satow, find a new closer to fill in for hard-throwing Ike Davis and find several bullpen arms to chew up innings. Veteran Seth Blair adds depth.

3. We had a big recruiting class though, right?

Even after seven ASU recruits signed MLB contracts for a combined $12 million, Baseball America still ranked ASU’s class No. 1 in the nation. And these kids will go immediately into the lineup.

Freshmen shortstop Riccio Torrez (brother of Raoul) and second baseman Zack MacPhee and junior college transfers first baseman Jared McDonald, catcher Carlos Ramirez and rightfielder Kole Calhoun could all start in the field. Freshmen Johnny Ruettiger and Zach Wilson could split time as designated hitter, and transfer left-hander Josh Spence is expected to slide immediately into the rotation behind Leake.

4. So what do the experts think of the Sun Devils’ chances?

The experts are split, ranking the Sun Devils as high as sixth and as low as 22nd in the five major polls. We’ll take Baseball America’s No. 13 as a happy median. The Pac-10 coaches are slightly more impressed, tabbing his team to win a third consecutive conference crown by a narrow margin. Five teams shared 10 first-place votes and ASU got the nod by two points over UCLA.

5. It’s your turn. What’s your take, Sun Devils?
Can ASU replace last year’s boppers and make another run at Omaha? Vote in the poll on the left side of this page and drop your thoughts in the comments below!

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5. ASU 70, Notre Dame 61 (women’s hoops, 2005) … Kylan Loney scored eight of her 20 points in the final 1:29 as the Sun Devils rallied from a 13-point deficit to upset the 11th-ranked Irish and advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1983. ASU’s been to the tourney every year since.

4. ASU 9, Cal State Fullerton 8 (baseball, 2005) … The underdog Sun Devils exorcised their Fullerton demons — and got a huge monkey off Pat Murphy’s back — by rallying from a five-run deficit against the defending national champs to win the deciding game of the Fullerton Super Regional. The win sent ASU to the College World Series for the first time since 1998.

3. ASU 61, UCLA 58 (men’s hoops, 2009) … Facing a Bruins squad that had advanced to three straight Final Fours, the Sun Devils held their opponents without a field goal for 12 minutes as they ground their way back from an 11-point second-half deficit. It was ASU’s first road win over a top 10 team since 1998. (Read our weekend recap.)

2. ASU 9, Arizona 8 (softball, 2007) … Kristen Miller’s two-run single in the bottom of the sixth led the Sun Devils to their first sweep of the Wildcats in 20 years. The win over the two-time defending national champs spurred the Sun Devils to the Pac-10 crown and their first national title ever.

1. ASU 19, Nebraska 0 (football, 1996) … The top-ranked Cornhuskers had won 26 straight games and back-to-back national championships before they were ambushed by Derrick Rodgers and the Sun Devil defense. The win propelled ASU to an undefeated regular season, a Pac-10 championship and one of two Rose Bowls in program history.

What’s Your Take, Sun Devils?
Did we leave a landmark win off the list? Where does Saturday’s upset of UCLA rank? Let us know in the comments!

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Our friends over at Fanster.com have been running down the top 25 Phoenix sports stories of the year over the last month or so. The list has been dominated by pro sports stories, but a handful of Arizona State items have nudged their way in.

Unfortunately, they’ve not been terribly positive. Here’s the list:

• No. 22: Led by pitcher Katie Burkhart, ASU wins its first ever national championship in softball. link
• No. 20: Ike Davis and Brett Wallace stage a fight and then get ousted from the Super Regionals by Fresno State. link
• No. 13: The ASU hoops team is snubbed by the NCAA Tournament selection committee – in favor of UofA no less. link
• No. 11: The high hopes of Sun Devil football fans are dashed in a school-record six-game losing streak. link

At Echo from the Buttes, we’re not big on lists of four items. Three? OK. Five? Even better. So what ASU sports story of 2008 would you nominate to round out the list?

May we suggest: heptathlete Jacquelyn Johnson winning her sixth and seventh NCAA championships en route to an appearance in the Olympics, James Harden and Jeff Pendergraph delaying their NBA careers to return to Tempe, or the Rudy Carpenter era ending with a loss to Arizona.

What’s Your Take, Sun Devils?
What Sun Devil sports story would you add to the list? Let us know in the comments below!

The Arizona State baseball program officially (and finally) announced its 2009 recruiting class this week and to no one’s surprise it’s an impressive list.

Included among the 17 prospects (14 high school, three junior college) on the list below are six of the top 100 high school players in the country.

The class is expected by many to be ranked among the top 10 in college baseball. This would be nothing new to Pat Murphy, who welcomed the top ranked recruiting class in the country to Tempe this fall.

Truth be told, many of the 2009 guys will never end up in Tempe. Some will play football or basketball. Others will skip college and go straight to professional baseball, a la Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals and any number of other would be Sun Devils.

The leading contenders for the latter fate are Top 100 prospects Jake Barrett of Mesa’s Desert Ridge HS, Floridian Deven Marrero, Texan Jacob Morris and Californians Andrew Aplin, Nolan Arenado and Chad Thompson.

But hey crazier things have happened. No one imagined Ike Davis would ever step foot on campus going into his senior year at Scottsdale Chaparral HS. And he ended up looking pretty good in maroon and gold.

Here’s the list:

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David Ortiz calls him caballito, Spanish for little pony.

Ozzie Guillen calls him a jockey.

Echo from the Buttes calls him the No. 1 Sun Devil in the Majors.

The Baseball Writers Association of America calls him MVP.

Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia was named the American League Most Valuable Player on Tuesday, receiving 16 of 28 possible first-place votes. (Of course, we predicted this back in September.)

Pedroia is the first Sun Devil to win the award since Barry Bonds picked up the last of his seven in 2004. He’s also the first second baseman to win the MVP in the A.L. since Nellie Fox way back in 1959.

The MVP is yet another in an impressive haul of accolades for Pedroia. In two big league seasons, he’s won a World Series ring, Rookie of the Year, MVP, a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger, and he’s started at second base for the A.L. in the All-Star Game.

Wow.

It’s tough to find someone with quite that good of a run so early in their careers, but here’s a stab at some greats who’ve come close.

• Joe DiMaggio, who probably had the greatest start ever to a career, won the World Series in his first four seasons, finished second in the MVP race in his second season and definitely would have won Rookie of the Year if it existed in 1936, but, of course, it didn’t.
• Jackie Robinson won the first-ever Rookie of the Year in 1947, then won an MVP and made his first All-Star appearance in 1949. But he didn’t win a World Series until 1955.
• Derek Jeter won Rookie of the Year and a World Series in 1996, but didn’t make an All-Star team until 1998 and has never won an MVP.
• Albert Pujols, this year’s N.L. MVP, won Rookie of the Year and a Silver Slugger in 2001, finished second behind Bonds in the MVP in 2002, and made it to the NLCS that year (and has since won two MVPs, a World Series and a Gold Glove).
• Ryan Howard probably comes the closest to Pedroia’s haul. He won Rookie of the Year in 2005, and then in 2006 won an MVP and Silver Slugger, made an All-Star Game appearance and won the Home Run Derby. And then the Phillies won the World Series this past October. But he’ll start a big-league game at pitcher before he comes within a mile of a Gold Glove.

So, historically, it really is an impressive two-year run for Pedroia, and if we had the leverage of ESPN or somebody like that, we’d get the Elias Sports Bureau on it right away to try to find someone to match it.

In related news, Andre Ethier didn’t receive a single vote in the National League MVP race, not even a 10th place nod, while guys like Jose Valverde, Nate McLouth and Derrek Lee did.

Nobody ever said this stuff had to make sense.

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Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia won the American League Gold Glove after a season in which he posted a .992 fielding percentage and just six errors in 733 chances. He also batted .326 with 17 home runs and 83 RBIs.

Up next for Pedroia could be the AL MVP Award, which will be handed out next week. (As we wrote back in September, we think they should give it to the jockey.)

We feel this Pedroia quote from the Boston Globe sums up why we’ve loved Pedro since his days in Tempe. “I really didn’t think much about (the award). I was kind of still a little upset after the way the season ended, watching the World Series.”

Meanwhile, none who watched him at ASU would accuse Brett Wallace of playing with a Gold Glove at third base. But with Albert Pujols blocking Wallace’s ascent to the majors as a first baseman, third base is exactly where he’s been playing for the St. Louis Cardinals.

It turns out Wallace is developing quite nicely at third base. He had six errors in 126 chances during the regular season.

After hitting .337 with eight home runs and 36 RBI in 202 minor league at-bats this summer, Wallace was placed along with six other Sun Devils in the prestigious Arizona Fall League.

Quoth Cardinals suit John Vuch to MLB.com: “He’s been better than we expected defensively. He has an unusual throwing motion, but he has arm strength. He doesn’t look like your prototypical third baseman, but he has first-step quickness and his hands work. We knew he was going to hit.”

No wonder we placed Wallace atop our list of the top five Sun Devils in minor league baseball.

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