Brewers GM Doug Melvin told Adam McCalvy of MLB.com on Wednesday that he expects all of his club's potential free agents to reach the open market.
"No," said Melvin.. "I don't think they want to sign, personally. They want to wait until Friday and hope someone picks up the phone and makes them an offer they never thought they would get."
The Brewers, and the rest of baseball's 29 clubs, have until Friday at 12:00am ET to negotiate exclusively with team members who are not under contract for 2010. After that deadline, the hot stove season is truly on and things around here will get even busier.
As McCalvy notes, Milwaukee has nine outgoing free agents: Outfielders Mike Cameron, Frank Catalanotto and Corey Patterson, infielders Craig Counsell and Felipe Lopez, catcher Jason Kendall and pitchers Braden Looper, Claudio Vargas and David Weathers.
The Carlos Gomez acquisition likely means Cameron is gone and the Brewers are ready to give a healthy Rickie Weeks the second base job over Lopez, a Type B free agent who is likely to be offered arbitration but will almost certainly decline. As for the others, we shall see.
