By bringing Oliver Perez back on board, the Mets rotation looks something like:
1. Johan Santana
2. Mike Pelfrey
3. Oliver Perez
4. John Maine
5. Tim Redding / Freddy Garcia / Jon Niese
With that rotation, and the surplus of possible No. 5 starters on the 40-man roster, I think the Mets should bring on Ben Sheets, if and only if he's halfway healthy.
The pitcher understands that he's injured, and from what we've seen with his career, if he can get out there, he will. Yes, he spends a lot of time on the disabled list, but I feel as though the Mets have enough arms to suffice in a time of need.
Say Sheets makes only 20 starts. That leaves roughly 13 more starts to fill in. I'm confident a rotating cast of Redding, Garcia and Niese could put together a bakers dozen worth of decent starts in his absence.
The Mets have seen, over the past two seasons, that every game is extremely important. If they can get 15 good starts out of Sheets, he might be worth the money. (Notice I haven't talked contract figures yet.)
I'm not quite sure what I'd be comfortable seeing the Mets offer Sheets. They still have a few more cogs to fit in the machine, such as a left-handed arm and possibly another bat, so I don't think they're chomping at the bit to sign him. Still, they should explore all their options and see how much he's really asking.
He'd be playing on a competitive team, much more so than Texas, a team he's been talking to of late, and would be on the big stage to try and set up for a nice payday after one or two years.
Sheets should adopt a lyric from ABBA: "Take a chance on me!"
Did I really just quote ABBA? Yikes.
