If there was one player in the A’s spring training camp that seemed the least likely to make it onto the Oakland roster in 2013, Daric Barton would have gotten many, if not most, of the votes.

He is a left-handed hitting first baseman with minimal power and he is on a team where Brandon Moss is a one-time outfielder-turned-first base who is left-hand and who has plenty of power. It was Moss who had taken Barton’s job last season.

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Tommy Milone walked out of the Oakland clubhouse Tuesday seemingly having put the 1-0 loss to Cleveland behind him.

His teammates weren’t so fortunate.

They not only didn’t hit behind Milone, the A’s not getting a runner to second base, but they didn’t play defense behind him, either.

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At some level A’s manager Bob Melvin seems to have made a wise choice in having John Jaso get most of the starts in the leadoff spot with Coco Crisp on the disabled list.

You want the leadoff hitter to get one base, and Jaso has done that. His on-base percentage coming into Tuesday when in the leadoff slot was .462. He doesn’t have great speed, but getting on is the name of the game.

Jaso has been all over the lineup the last season-plus in Seattle and Oakland, and he doesn’t change his work habits just because of where he’s situated in the lineup.

Except …

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Chris Resop knew he wasn’t going to pitch as well all season as he did in the season’s first two weeks.

The right-handed reliever pitched in seven games, didn’t give up a run and barely allowed a loud foul ball.

When the tables turned on him they were vicious.

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Jason Giambi looks at Nick Swisher and he sees himself at a younger age.

Cleveland cleanup hitter Swisher looks at Giambi and sees the player he idolized while coming up in the Oakland organization.

The two ex-A’s look at the current A’s and they see the team they’d like their team to become.

Ah, the wheels do go round and round in baseball.

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It’s not sign language, but it might as well be.

After circling the bases on his fifth-inning two-run homer, the A’s Yoenis Cespedes stuck out his two index fingers, pointed them at the crowd behind the third base dugout and alternately waggled them up and down.

This series, for the first time, Cespedes had his mother in the stands. She and some other family members had been in St. Petersburg for a series with the Rays late last month, but Cespedes was hurt and didn’t play in the series.

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The A’s sent Chris Young back to Oakland so the outfielder, currently on the 15-day disabled list, can join the rest of the group working with rehab coordinator Brian Schulman.
Young (left quad) becomes the third player to have been disabled in Monday’s 19-inning, six-hour, 32-minute win over the Angels to be in the Bay Area while the team is in the early stages of a 10-game, three-city road trip through New York, Cleveland and Seattle.
Left-handed starter Brett Anderson (sprained right ankle) and center fielder Coco Crisp (left hamstring strain) never left Oakland to come on the trip.
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For a man who has been primarily a platoon player in a Major League career that career that dates back to 2007, Seth Smith is looking decidedly un-platoonish these days.

Smith, a left-hander, came into the season having an 11-1 edge in games started against right-handed pitchers opposed to lefties, 368 to 32. Sunday, however, was his fifth start against a lefty this season in 27 games overall, and his third in the last four games.

He’s playing about twice as often against lefties this year than he has historically.

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A’s catcher John Jaso thought he’d done on Saturday what Adam Rosales did on Friday, hitting a homer as the first man to bat for the A’s against the Yankees.

The ball was long enough, but it was pulled back into the Yankee stadium playing grounds by Ichiro Suzuki, the Yankee right fielder with home Jaso was a teammate in Seattle last season.

When Ichiro came up to the plate in the second inning for the first time, Jaso said he had some choice words for him.

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In retrospect it’s become increasingly important that the A’s won Monday’s 19-inning, six-hour, 32-minute marathon against the Angels in Oakland, because the negative repercussions from that game just keep mounting.

Outfielder Chris Young is the third player on the team to have suffered an injury in that game that necessitated a trip to the disabled list, Young’s left quad keeping him from running full out.

Already, the A’s had lost pitcher Brett Anderson to a sprained right foot (admittedly, he was already hurting before his 5.1 innings of one-run relief) and center fielder Coco Crisp, who strained his left hamstring while running up the third base line.

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