With Mike Cameron‘s $10 million salary coming off the books at the beginning of next year, it’s unlikely the Brewers will offer him arbitration and he’ll get a two/three year deal with a team in need of a center fielder that has more money available to spend than the Brewers. This could be different had the Brewers not wrapped up nearly 1/4 of next year’s salary in Jeff Suppan and Bill Hall… but that’s the way it is, and the Brewers aren’t likely to have a clear center fielder for 2010 by this offseason.

So what are the options? Tom Haudricourt suggested a plan I liked in a chat with the fans last week:

I am the Brewers’ GM. This is what I do before Opening Day 2010: Trade Hart and Hardy and any prospect not named Gamel or Escobar for some starting pitching. There certainly isn’t any coming through the system right now. I’d re-sign Felipe Lopez to play second, move Rickie Weeks to center, move Mat Gamel to right and install Casey McGehee as my third baseman and Alcides Escobar as my shortstop. I’d sign Kendall for one more year and let him tutor Angel Salome in a backup role. I’d take that team to battle and see what happens.

This is a good idea in principle, but forcing Weeks to learn one of the most important defensive positions in a span of one offseason is more difficult to do than it sounds and I’m not ready to trot out a 2010 lineup with two-thirds of the outfield playing a position they’ve never played competitively before. Besides, throwing Mat Gamel in right field is basically giving up on all the work that’s been put into him at 3B, and since I heard his defensive stats aren’t that terrible after extensive work with defensive whiz Don Money I’m not ready to give up on his defense quite yet (as unnatural as it may look). He’s the third-base version of Rickie Weeks.

Instead who should be playing center is a combo plate of Jason Bourgeois and Jody Gerut. Gerut has been having a real down year but has gotten better lately and with any smidgen of consistent playing time down the stretch he could really stretch himself out into a full-or-half time player again.

Bourgeois is pretty good against left-handers and Gerut is pretty good against righties. Since they’re both competent defensively, I don’t see why an .800/.825 OPS and average-to-pretty-good D in center field will harm the Brewers anyways, and they’re going to be paying Gerut something around $1.5 million anyways through arbitration, it’ll be a little $2 million steal in center. It’ll be one of those moves Doug Melvin always seems to make.

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J.J. Hardy Update: .154/.214/.462/.676 in 13 ABs. Small sample size, but he’s been hitting balls really weakly all season long. I wouldn’t mind if he saves his best for last — between this and tampering with Hardy’s service time, Dougie Mustache could pull off a pretty sly move for a starting pitcher, since a cheap shortstop who’s still valuable despite being awful with the bat who’s under control for two more years it an incredibly valuable commodity, especially to an SS-hungry team like Boston.

He has to do it against AAA pitching though.

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milwaukee brewers by Cody