Optimistic signs ahead?

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. -- At the stroke of midnight last night, the Red Sox reached a milestone as one of their best pitchers since Cy Young and their best catcher since Carlton Fisk led 14 teammates into full-blown free agency.

Pedro Martinez and Jason Varitek were free to field financial offers from any team in baseball, as were the others, including Derek Lowe and Orlando Cabrera, once the clock struck midnight. At that moment, the window closed on Boston's 15 days of exclusive negotiating rights with its free agents, and a new era dawned.

Now, the Sox need to wait in line with everyone else as they continue their yearlong effort to retain Martinez and Varitek. But even if it may seem as if the Sox have lost their last advantage, team officials expressed no panic.

"It's a natural part of the process," general manager Theo Epstein said as the GMs met for a fourth day at the Ritz-Carlton. "Sometimes the market has to factor into the process, but we're not turning our back on any of our guys. We'll remain attentive and stay in communication with them."

The Sox have continued talking to Martinez's agent, Fernando Cuza, since they made a two-year, $25.5 million offer with a $13 million option for 2007 and $2 million in potential bonuses. And they renewed talks with Varitek's agent, Scott Boras, though they may be more widely divided with Varitek than Martinez since the catcher is seeking a five-year deal with a no-trade clause at a premium salary.

The Sox also are trying to work something out with Cabrera, but they may not be able to satisfy his needs if they offer a relatively short-term deal in anticipation of calling up their top prospect, Hanley Ramirez, within the next two years. The Mets are considered one of the possible destinations for Cabrera, although the market for shortstops is so deep that much remains unsettled.

As for Lowe, he seems destined to sign elsewhere, with the Orioles, Phillies, and Dodgers among his potential suitors. The Dodgers also appear poised to take a run at Varitek.

The Sox plan to keep an eye on a number of their other free agents, including Doug Mirabelli and Gabe Kapler.

This is the time of year when teams float and field a large number of proposals to try to gauge which players may be available on the trade market and at what cost. Since the Sox rank among the most creative teams, they have been busy testing the waters. But they have closely guarded their talks to prevent upsetting players whose contracts may have been offered, as happened last winter with Nomar Garciaparra and Manny Ramirez.

Epstein spent much of the day meeting with other GMs.

"We tried a lot of things and built some foundations for later talks," he said, "but we didn't consummate anything."

The meetings end today and no major deal had been made by any teams through last night.

No movement on replay
The general managers deadlocked, 15-15, on whether to further study permitting umpires to use video replays. Reds GM Dan O'Brien made the case for replays while interim Expos GM Jim Bowden, formerly of the Reds, spoke against it. The vote may have been influenced in part by the umpires twice correcting faulty calls in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series between the Sox and Yankees without video replays. "I think that probably had something to do with the sentiment in the room," said Sandy Alderson, executive vice president of baseball operations for Major League Baseball. "It would have been interesting to see if they had gotten those calls wrong if there would have been more interest in pursuing instant replays." Alderson said the umpires consulted each other three other times in the postseason on disputed calls and got two of the decisions right. Epstein would not say how he voted, citing a confidentiality rule . . . To Curt Schilling's likely consternation, Alderson also presented survey results to the general managers that showed virtually no difference last season between the percentage of strikes called in the 10 parks equipped with the QuesTec System that evaluates umpires and the 20 parks without the system. The percentage of strikes was 30.9 in QuesTec parks, 31.1 in the others. Also, the ERA last season in QuesTec parks was 4.41, and it was 4.48 in the others, which Alderson said suggests pitchers may have had a slight advantage in QuesTec parks.