Bob Melvin is as impressed with Tom Milone as Kurt Suzuki was.

Susan Slusser posted the photo that Amanda McCarthy tweeted. It has Brandon and his wife on the cover of ESPN the Magazine. There is quite a bit of Amanda in the photo. Ahem.

Tyler Kepner has a Manny Ramirez column in the *New York Times in which he cites Terry Francona:

Manny Ramirez is the worst human being I've ever met.

There's a link to the quote in the electronic version of the story, so you can get the whole context there.

The whole frame of Kepner's column, though, is that Manny Ramirez is a "drug cheat" who Kepner thinks should have a lifetime ban if the rules were as he wants them to be. This annoys me, but it's a basic difference that I doubt I'd be able to resolve with Kepner -- he thinks "PE"Ds are horrible and deserve massive punishments and I don't. Kepner is a professional, so I assume he's done his reading in the area, seen the writing of the anti-anti-"PE"D crowd (at, for instance, Baseball Prospectus), and come away unconvinced. I'm no Joe Sheehan, so if those of us on what I believe to be the enlightened side haven't won him over yet, my response to him here on Beaneball certainly isn't going to. I will, in other words, let him go in peace, filled with the anger of those who know They Are Right.

Bob Melvin has specific things he wants to see from Fautino De Los Santos: better slider, better command, quicker to the plate. The last thing won't matter as much if he can master the first two because there won't be many base-runners to worry about.

The A's apparently really do see Jordan Norberto as a starter, with the bullpen role being the way he can break in. This is strange. I think David Wishinsky is as mystified as I am.

Me elsewhere: I have a piece at Baseball Prospectus about why spring training is terrible. It's behind the paywall. You don't have to read it.

Some catchup:

Big League Stew has the 10 best things about being an A's fan. My favorite one is probably where fans just pee in the parking lot.

Jim Bowden grades the off-seasons for ESPN Insider and gives the A's a C+ but doesn't really explain why. He says the A's are rebuilding, but does the C+ mean he doesn't think they got good pieces to accomplish that? It's unclear.