caulfield12

Erik Johnson looking MUCH more confident, crisp fastball today...looks like a totally different pitcher. That would be huge if he could reassert himself and become a positive

Erik Johnson looking MUCH more confident, crisp fastball today.

Iowa State furiously charges back from 15 down in the 2nd half to tie it.....67-67, TEX has the ball with less than a minute to go.

State of Iowa getting eviscerated today. Of course, TEX has all the motivation, their tourney lives are riding on this game. Win and they're in, lose and they're out.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 05:03 PM) Ricky Davis I believe committed as a freshman or sophomore in HS. Woodbury was a large recruit Fran beat out Roy Williams. The guy IMO couldn't be more dissappointing. He is a decent defender, but I don't think he can dunk without a running start. Well, he succeeds in making Les Jepsen, Ryan Bowen, Acie Earl and Jared Reiner look like superstars. Reiner was also highly recruited, maybe not quite to the extent as Woodbury. Don't forget Reggie Evans and Luke Recker, that has to count for something...albeit Evans was a JC transfer, he was one of the Top 5 in the JC ranks coming out.

Hawkins AFTER Trey? C'mon, that's ridiculous. And Danish so low? I guess you can argue Adolfo on POTENTIAL, but Micker's MILES away right now. Still a big improvement from last year's list, which was beyond ridiculous from MLB.

QUOTE (Señor Ding-Dong @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 04:30 PM) I'm thinking that if he has a decent or better season in AA this year we could see him in the bigs for a cup of coffee as early as next season. Could be this September, unless the White Sox are in the pennant race. In that case, he'd be called up probably to just sit on the bench and soak in the experience. WHO is H.Jones (LF) that got into the game? Justin Jirschele's also in. Okay, it's HUNTER Jones, cool name at least. http://thebaseballcube.com/players/profile...?P=Hunter-Jones Hunter Jones made the RED SOX as a pitcher in 2009, was in independent ball last season, has played pretty much every position on the diamond defensively if you look at his player card. 31 years old... Finally, Lillian will be happy. JUAN DIAZ into da game. Uh-oh, a single just past him, just as he entered the game.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 04:22 PM) Murray and Kingsbury were 20 years before or so. The others were not the national recruits Woodbury was. Woodbury was 19th on the ESPN list. What was Ricky Davis? Tyler Smith was ranked as one of the top 50 seniors in the nation a year ago and is regarded the number two post-graduate player in the nation by Scout.com. He was selected as one of the top 10 high school players in the nation when Street & Smith's named him a second team selection on the 2004 Boys High School all-America team. He is rated a four-star prospect by Rivals.com. hawkeyesports.com

QUOTE (Señor Ding-Dong @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 04:21 PM) Great to see Hawkins having a nice spring and showing he belongs. He looks like he's made and is continuing to make the adjustments required of him. This should do wonders for his confidence as he enters AA. Does anyone have any video of his at-bats from today? Hawkins cruising along at .467. Doesn't show any highlights popping up (yet at least) on the MLB.com gameday box. Why did we sign Cabrera again? (Just kidding, mostly.)

Anderson, Hawkins, Danish, Montas and Adams all have star potential as well, maybe not SUPERSTAR, but at least All-Star. Most would say that Anderson, Hawkins and Montas have off the charts ceilings...Adams, if he repeats again, puts himself in that conversation as well. Of course, doesn't mean it will happen, we've learned that time and time again as Sox fans.

Now, instead of making a potential Big Ten Tournament run into the weekend, the Hawkeyes get a full week off, at least. Sure, they'll hear their name called in a few days on Selection Sunday, but this one qualifies as a bad loss (to a team that went 4-14 in the Big Ten) and could hurt their seeding – maybe knocking them down to the No. 8 or 9 range, as opposed to the No. 6 or 7 that was pegged in front of Iowa's name before Thursday. It was just last year that Iowa was KO'd by an inferior Northwestern team on the first day of the Big Ten Tournament and relegated to a First Four NCAA Tournament game in Dayton, Ohio. Iowa is now 2-9 in this event the last nine years, including 2-5 under McCaffery. www.hawkcentral.com

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 02:18 PM) He probably is as heralded of a recruit Iowa has had in 20 years, but he's built like a dinosaur. Tall with short arms and no leaping ability. He has as many fouls as points and rebounds combined today. You would think a legit 7'1" with any athletic ability should be able to put up big numbers in the NCAA. Ummm....Kenyon Murray was a McDonald's All-American. Brunner, Horner and Adam Haluska (transfer from Iowa State). Jess Settles. Andre Woolridge, albeit a transfer from NE. Tyler Smith was definitely more highly-recruited....went to TN with Pearl. RICKY DAVIS, big-time NBA career, dunk artist and pure scorer, came out of DAVENPORT North. Chris Kingsbury, McDonald's All-American out of OH. Chris Street. Dean Oliver.

Hawkins came very close to going 3 for 3 and hitting a bomb to dead CF right there. Wind has shifted to a strong gale coming in over the last couple of innings. Sharp double and a single, very impressive...from watching the game yesterday, didn't realize how huge Hawkins was...that guy can still move, but definitely will never play CF again. JD Martin just gave up a BOMB to LF over Hawkins' head.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 12:23 PM) "Hating on" (for lack of better words) Cooper and protecting Beckham are very clear, contrarian points here. I will never shy away from an argument but even still, bucking the consensus so brazenly with no real argument other than to nitpick and concentrate on one small part of the other poster's responses just seems like a type of banter you can't classify as constructive. But you are right, Dick Allen is a very good poster most of the time. I wouldn't necessarily lump him in with Marty and TUC either. DA is here because he loves the Sox. I am not sure why Marty was here and TUC was here because he loves hearing himself talk. As far as Kyyle and NSS, what bite do they even have? No one gets threatened and mods/admins only use the ban-hammer when guys are proud proponents of drunk drivers. Have you been gone from WSI so long that you forgot what the alternative is? I remember them changing your thread titles to mock you and threatening to ban you for having an opinion. Quite the contrast at SoxTalk. The worst thing about it was that invited my best friend to that board...we grew up together being huge White Sox fans our whole lives, and the mods there starting getting over him within a week or so about his opinions on music or something that had nothing to do with the game of baseball. I ended up feeling really badly, my friend quickly gave up posting there and then I just ended up asking to receive a lifetime ban. Those guys honestly didn't deserve the privilege of running a board and pissing off lots of good Sox fans in the process. As for Marty, I think at one point he just completely stopped responding because we'd ALWAYS argue and aggravate each other. It was like ncorgbl in the good 'ol days....some thought he was Joe Cowley, haha, although that's doubtful/dubious at best. I guess the other thing is that when you have a baby, even though it's the biggest cliche in the book....it puts things in perspective and you realize how idiotic getting upset about an anonymous message board (about something that's one of your shared passions in life with other posters) truly is. Maybe TUC started to understand that in the end, after he realized drawing attention to yourself, your opinions and your writing style is only 25% of contributing to a forum such as this one.

Translation: Dick Allen, not useful. But I jest. I've already exonerated him for losing our Gordon Beckham bet, where he incessantly vilified me for a couple of weeks for being negative and "rooting for a Sox player to do poorly (hitting under .240 was the prediction)," that I wasn't a real fan, was a miserable person, didn't come to games or buy season tickets, etc. Nevertheless, he still needs his fix of taking shots at Don Cooper and protecting Gordon Beckham. Probably not the right side of the argument to be on at this point for most Sox fans. So this year, it's on again....I'm predicting Gordo will be over .270 with no pressure at all on him. It's not that I WANTED him to do poorly, it's just that 2010-2014 taught us to expect nothing different...like pounding a round peg into a square hole or vice-versa. FWIW, I enjoy MR. ALLEN (couldn't write I enjoy DICK without envisioning Beavis and Butthead) about 80-85% of the time (haha, assigning percentages is always fun)...especially when it comes down to discussions about team finances/business aspects of the game/economics principles. Overall, he's one of my favorite posters, along with Marty and TUC. Always having complete agreement or enforced acceptance of a certain viewpoint/censorship will destroy a board. And I've probably had as many run-ins and arguments with Kyyle and Northside as he has...maybe more. Their bark is worse than their bite (waits nervously to be banned while enjoying chicken tenders with honey mustard dipping sauce at Applebee's with Ozzie and Ozney in Lawrence after B12 tourney game).

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 11:40 AM) I'd be more interested if his price falls into the $20-30m range. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of knowing how the Gillaspie/Beckham experiment will turn out, but I'd almost rather see him at 3B than 2B, assuming Micah Johnson eventually can handle it. That would give us a tremendously-athletic infield, Olivera/Alexei/Micah/Abreu-LaRoche.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 11:36 AM) 10 years ago Illinois was the #1 overall seed in the NCAA tourney. Now they are about to miss the tourney for the 5th time in 8 years. Bruce Weber did more damage to the Illinois basketball program than sanctions in the 90s and looking more and more like Groce is not the guy to right the ship. Depressing. Try missing 10/15 tourneys when your school had made something like 18/23 prior to that, and the main reason was because the coach had the temerity to never lose a first round NCAA game but consistently had a hard time getting to the Sweet 16 since 1986-87. And some would argue it's 11/15 since the Hawkeyes were relegated to the play-in game after losing 6 of their final 7 and collapsing down the stretch. That said, Iowa is not Illinois (because of Chicago alone). I suppose for the Illini, it's almost ludicrous to miss anything approaching 50% or more.

Doesn't Illinois have one of the best recruiting classes in the B10? I would think that HAS to count for something, although it's a trap in a way...when you hesitate to pull the trigger on firing a coach because you're afraid to lose his "prized recruiting class." (also, like IND with Crean). http://globegazette.com/sports/local_sport...1cc4c002e0.html When they canned Lickliter, Iowa nearly instantaneously lost Ben Brust to WI and Cody Larson to the Univ of Florida, as well as F Aaron Fuller. They were both pretty highly touted, but neither of them ended up being star players and Lickliter would just have postponed the rebuild process for another 2-3 years had they stuck with him. Brust averaged 24.6 points as a senior at Mundelein High School, earning one of five spots on the Class 4A second-team all-state team selected by the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association. The 6-foot-2 guard topped 50 points in games against Evanston and Buckeye (Ariz.) as a senior and scored more than 30 points five times this season. He also averaged 5.9 rebounds, 4.6 assists and 3.1 steals. He committed to the Hawkeyes last summer and was part of a November signing class that ranked in the top 25 nationally at that time.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/112350602/ta...th-skippers-gms

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/112289452/so...six-year-offers 4-6 year offers on the table, fired his agent and trainer recently, fwiw....must have been blowback from the UCL elbow ligament rumors being out there everywhere.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?g...;mode=probables Montas getting the start today, despite not having a picture avail at MLB.com. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseb...0304-story.html

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 12, 2015 -> 07:29 AM) Does anyone ever look bad in spring training on the practice field? Just take the encouraging things about Jesse Crain. You would think he has at least a minor shot of being on the opening day roster, but I actually read from some insider non fluff piece, the Sox are "hoping" to get him in a spring training game as some point, so really, if Will Ferrell can play spring training games, Jesse Crain isn't close. Ynoa may be a decent pick up. But until he starts showing how great he looks in games that count, I take all the good reports with a grain of salt. His ERA was over 5.00 in high A last year. I don't recall Felipe Paulino looking particularly good in ST last year.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/12/us/ferguson-...ests/index.html FERGUSON PART DEUX Right on time for a new Cardinals' season.

http://www.csnchicago.com/white-sox/white-...&ocid=yahoo Was at 93-96 already....clearly, he's not going to go North with the major league team...but if he stays healthy, it's quite easy to imagine him making an impact, especially if guys like Petricka, Guerra and Putnam are struggling.

Rodon definitely wasn't sharp, and his fastball wasn't crisp. They weren't all over him, but they weren't swinging and missing much at all on the fastballs, which he threw 85%. Hence, the idea that he was mostly out there to get to his pitch count (50?) and work on fastball command/control on the corners. He wasn't exactly hit around in the first, balls found some holes....then again, he did get lucky when a runner was stealing and the batter hit the ball right at where Sanchez was running to cover the bag or it would have been another hit. Gallo did a good job of going with the pitch and taking it to the opposite field, fwiw. To me, the biggest problem was his control and the fact that he kept getting behind in the count and was forced to come over the heart of the plate with fastballs. He didn't seem TOO ruffled about things, and Brantly didn't help matters much at all, EITHER. He probably threw less than a half dozen sliders, and they were more slurvish than the sharp breaking one that's his plus/plus pitch. Melton was remarking that Rodon threw 97 MPH at NC State when he broke onto the scene as a prospect, and seemed to believe he was at 95-97 MPH today, but just from the naked eye and the batter's reactions, I'd guess it was 91-93/94. No proof of that at all, just my idea. The change-up, the 3rd pitch he's supposedly been working on...definitely a work in progress and way below average. It will get better if he improves his fastball command, can get ahead in counts and then the hitter gets into defense mode. The one main plus is that he's not going to go through the spring with a 0.00 ERA and force a discussion with Boras and the media about it being a travesty if he's not on the OD roster. As for height, I'd say 6'1 or 6'2", he's a BIG guy, the power in his trunk/torso/legs makes him appear shorter than reality because of his build.