Oakland A's Land Sheets In One-Year Deal

Sports News - January 26th, 2010 - Written By John Ritter

One of the biggest questions in the free agent market was how the most brittle players would fare.

The group was led by Ben Sheets, who has been a study in remarkable ability and unremarkable body tissue in his eight-year career. As one of the better pitchers when he's healthy, Sheets picked to start the 2008 All-Star game, but spent all of 2009 MLB Season on the disabled list. The Milwaukee Brewers allowed him to walk because of his injury history, leaving he and his agent to ponder who would take a chance on him and for how much.

The answer? The Oakland Athletics for $10 million. CBSSports blogger Danny Knobler reported the two parties agreed on a one-year deal after Sheets passed a physical on Tuesday, giving the A's an ace at the top of the rotation and Sheets a chance improve his stock for next off-season with a good, uneventful 2010 campaign.

Sheets made over $12 million in 2008, so his paycut is not a significant one despite being out of the league for over a year.

Sheets has only started 30 or more games once since 2004, the year he went 12-14 despite a 2.70 ERA and 264 strikeouts

Sheets drew interest from the Chicago Cubs, New York Mets, Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners after an impressive bullpen session last week. He has a career 86-83 record, primarily because of poor run support for most of his career, and has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of nearly 4-to-1.