Cliff Pennington has a groin and MLB might open in Australia in 2014, which Grant Balfour is excited about. Hint to MLB teams: if you don't want to play in Australia in 2014, don't sign Balfour. Your chances will go from 1/29 to 1 if you do.

It looks like Graham Godfrey is going to start and that Brad Peacock and Jarrod Parker are SOL for now.

Also in that link: Fautino De Los Santos pitched. Not particularly well, but he pitched.

Daric Barton officially hits the D.L., so we're getting closer to the solidified 25-man roster with Kila Ka'aihue and Brandon Allen manning first base.

Dallas Braden's setback now has a number and that number is three weeks. If the talk was mid-May before, maybe it's mid-June now? The story doesn't really talk dates, so it's hard to tell. One wonders whether the mid-May date built in setbacks all along, such that this doesn't actually change the date much. Of course, it'd be pretty silly to call a problem that resulted in the original date being stuck to a "setback," but this is all optics / semantics / public relations anyway, so we can't really hold anybody to logic.

Anyway, Joe Stiglich throws early to mid-June out as possibilities.

Alan Torres notes that the A's could be better right now from the Gio Gonzalez trade if Tom Milone pitches to his potential and Gio Gonzalez stays about the same. Alan cites ZiPS, which is pretty bullish on Milone. PECOTA, by contrast, figures Milone for a near-replacement-level (in Oakland, anyway) ~4.5 ERA. If you talk to the scouts, they'd probably fall on the PECOTA side of things given Milone's bread-denter and the serious question of whether his soft stuff can strike out major-league hitters (or induce consistent weak contact, either way).

I don't necessarily have an opinion, for what it's worth, and Alan's piece was really about "this is what could happen," not "this is what will happen." I think it's a good point: Milone has things in his statistical profile that point to the ability to be a very useful major-league pitcher.

If you live near Stockton, their roster looks awfully intriguing: A.J. Cole, Ian Krol, Blake Hassebrock, Sean Doolittle, Miles Head, Max Stassi, and Rashun Dixon will all be there. Stockton's a bit of a drive for me, but it's right next door for you Bay Area types.

Apparently some newspapers carry season previews for minor-league teams that address those teams' chances of winning a AAA championship. Of course, when that team is Sacramento, the answer, if history is any guide, has been "the chances are quite good."

Matt Swartz adds a useful wrinkle to typical marginal dollars per marginal win analysis by looking at how efficiently teams spend their money in two different markets: "non-market" players (player subject to the reserve clause) and free agents. There's no direct application to the A's, but this is pretty Moneyball-relevant, no?

R.J. Anderson has a great rundown of potential MLB milestones this year. A's relevant ones include Manny Ramirez moving up the all-time HR list and ... ok, that's all. Which, you know, I hope you're not surprised. It's the A's.