‘“It’s hard because Preston had a good year for us and this is his chance to hit free agency and, like houses, you have to put a market value on them,” Beane told me during a one-on-one interview. “I’ve been in these situations where you thought you could bring your guy back, or thought you could get a guy, and all it takes is one team who really felt like that was a huge need for them and they overspend and go way up. So we’ll value that and we’ll hope to get Preston Brown back, but until the ink’s on the paper you don’t know if that’s going to happen or not.”’