Taking the year off when your contract expires doesn't normally result in a nice new contract once you're ready to come back to work. Oh, if the rest of us were so lucky to be Ben Sheets.
Yesterday, just a season removed from a torn flexor tendon in his right elbow, Sheets signed a one year, $10 million contract with the Oakland Athletics.
And supposedly the economy is tanking. I guess the A's missed the memo. Or maybe they just failed to realize that the elbow Sheets tore the tendon in is on his PITCHING arm.
Take advantage of the time Big Ben because if your record stays mediocre as it has throughout your career, 86-83, you'll never get this great of a deal again.
Sheets has 1206 K's compared to 313 BB's, which is remarkable for fantasy sports owners. But the real gauge in real life will be if he can catapult the A's out of the American League West's cellar and back to the playoffs.
This is the defining year of Sheets career. He'll either regain his stature as one of the best in the league and become a Yankee by 2011, or he'll fizzle out and take a seat on the "what could have been" train next to Kerry Wood and Mark Prior.
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