Atlanta Braves Sign Ben Sheets to a Minor League Deal

According to Mark Bowman via Twitter, the Braves and Ben Sheets have agreed to a minor league deal:

"Braves have signed Ben Sheets to a Minor League deal. He threw for four teams on Wednesday at Georgia Tech."

Sheets last pitched in the majors in 2010 for the Oakland Athletics where he threw 119 innings and finished with a 4-9 record. He put up a 6.34 K/9 and a 3.24 BB/9. He managed a 4.53 ERA, 4.71 FIP, and 1.39 WHIP.

His career numbers are better but nothing phenomenal, 7.50 K/9, 2.07 BB/9, 4.53 ERA, 4.71 FIP and 1.22 WHIP.

We shouldn’t expect too much with Ben Sheets as he has been out of baseball for a year, in his mid 30’s, and has a pretty large injury history. Fortunately the deal is low risk as well, since it is a minor league deal.

Hopefully Frank Wren is using Sheets to add to the pitching depth that we have lost a bit since the Beachy injury, and not the rotation addition that I have been talking about. Sheets may have once been an innings eating workhorse, but he is long passed that now. The last time he threw more than 200 innings was in 2004.

The deal can’t really hurt us, but if anyone is expecting it to put our rotation on the same level as the Nationals… well you are just kidding yourself. Look for the Braves to make some other deal for an arm before the trade deadline.