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.

During the top of the 9th inning in yesterday’s ballgame, I told the friend I was watching the game with, “watch out for this Jason Kendall double play — the rally will vanish.” Pinch-hitter Casey McGehee led off the 9th inning with a walk and the tying run was on first with nobody out. Kendall promptly hit into a double play, causing little bit of controversy in Brewerland for not using an awful hitter such as Kendall to bunt McGehee into scoring position. This happened in another game earlier this season when Jody Gerut didn’t drop down the bunt in the 9th to move the runner over and promptly grounded into a killer double play.

With the Brewers down by one bunting with Kendall seems like the smartest play in that scenario. Unfortunately, statistically it’s not supposed to work. On average, teams score more runs with a runner at first and nobody out than a runner at second and one out unless a hitter hits well below the Mendoza line on a regular basis. Since the right strategy right there would have been to play for multiple runs and not just one, having Kendall bat for a hit was definitely the right play. If this was the bottom of the 9th and the game was tied, well, then I’d have a different strategy. But most of the time Kendall won’t ground into a double play, and yesterday just happened to be one of those times where he did.

Little things like that are part of the reason I really respect Ken Macha so far as the manager. He (for the most part) makes good pinch-hitting decisions and short of leaving Manny Parra hung out to dry he’s done a fantastic job with the bullpen. With former manager Ned Yost at the helm it seemed like I took each loss personally because each loss he seemed like he mismanaged the bullpen. With Macha, every time I get the Spidey-sense that a reliever is going to hit the wall or a pitcher, he comes out and makes the most appropriate change. He’s not the loyal-to-a-fault person that Yost was, and it’s nice to have a manager that shares the skepticism of a casual baseball fan. The clubhouse seems much more comfortable.

Another thing that’s impressed me about Macha so far is the way the Brewers have responded from bad stretches. Yost would sit back, trust his players, and tell everyone to calm down while chaos ensued behind him. Macha hasn’t been afraid to use a different lineup here, drop a guy who’s not performing there, and keep people away from extended slumps for a long period of time. After a horrid 4-9 start, the team bounced back nicely and played on fire for a month. After an ugly three-game sweep to the hands of the Twins (2 of the games I paid money to see), they responded with a 4-2 homestand. After losing 3 of 4 to the Marlins, they win 2 of 3 in Atlanta, coming a couple runs from a series sweep. It’s the little things that count, and this year it feels like a three-game losing streak isn’t a harbinger of doom and gloom for two weeks. It’s a bump in the road.

This weekend I’ll be heading down to Milwaukee to catch my first Miller Park game of the year. I’m getting awesome free tickets for Saturday’s game. Should be a blast — it’s nationally televised too. And an afternoon game.