February 13, 2005
Sheets of Money
It's nice to see that Ben Sheets and the Milwaukee Brewers have reached an agreement on a contract rather than go through an adversarial arbitration hearing. The two sides were only $1 million apart, so it was easy to split the difference. I wonder if Sheets would have gone for two years at that price? That would have allowed both teams to avoid arbitration for the remainder of Ben's reserve term and still allowed Sheets to seek free agency at the earliest time. Of course, with the price of pitcher's rapidly exapnding, maybe the Brewers should have offered Sheets five years, $50 million. That money could prove to be a bargain.
Posted by David Pinto at
06:48 PM
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Awesome! Now that I have passed through my angsty teen years into full on adulthood without the Brewers doing a thing, or actually doing many ridiculous things, its nice to see a decent plan in place that's being followed.
Sheets would have never accepted $6 mil for '06, as 3rd year arby guys always get more. I doubt if he'd accept any less than $8M, probably not any under $9M.
It's an interesting question: if you could go back to '99, would you rather draft Zito or Sheets? (Keep in mind that Zito's '02 season still tops Sheets last year...)
It sounds like win-win to me. Better than drafting Josh Girdley, Kyle Snyder, or Bobby Bradley.
Iwas surprised too that the Brewers didn't try to sign hime long term, though for me that would be 3-4 years, with an option year. 5 years guaranteed might be a bit much, especially since he'd be making $12 + mil the final year (good if he's healthy and productive, bad if he's injured & untradeable).
Doug Melvin has said on many occasions he will try to sign Sheets long-term after he proves himself recovered from offseason back surgery.
You may see an announced long-term deal between Sheets and the Brewers before the end of March.
