Yanks Should Go For Sheets

Recently I made a post about why the Yankees should sign Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. I still support that, but I have another name to float out there: Ben Sheets. With the Yankees recently in the running for Freddy Garcia, it shows that they would still like to add some depth to their pitching rotation. To me, Sheets seems like a much better version of Freddy Garcia, for about the same cost. Garcia's contract from the Mets could be worth anywhere between $6-9mm. Sheets could command a $10mm deal with a couple more million in incentives, plus a few option years. The Yankees do have about $10mm left in their budget for free agents and Sheets would be a great guy to use it on. 

Now the main pitfall to Sheets, has been his injuries. Even last year, when he started the All-Star game for the National League, he still ended the year with an injury and couldn't even pitch in the play-offs. However, if you want to compare him to Freddy Garcia, Sheets is actually less of an injury risk than Garcia. Sheets has pitched 339 innings over the last two years. In that same period of time, Garcia has only pitched 73. Now you can point to the fact that Sheets is a much better pitcher than Garcia, and thus has gotten a lot more opportunities, and that's true. But, one of the main reasons that Freddy hasn't gotten more chances, is because he's been injured most of the time. 

The final  reason why the Yanks should go after Ben Sheets, is the upside. If Sheets can be relatively healthy (decent chance), the Yankees would have an amazing pitching rotation: CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett topping it off, with two other Cy Young candidates in Chien-Ming Wang and Ben Sheets in the middle, and then have an above-par pitcher in Joba Chamberlain round things out. That is a staff that no team would want to face and if you put that with the enhanced lineup that includes the likes of A-Rod, Teixeira, and Jeter, you've got yourself a ballclub.