Throw Out The Sheets

One of this baseball season's off-season free agent mysteries -- besides Manny Ramirez not yet having a contract -- has been the seeming lack of interest in starting pitcher Ben Sheets. While an injury risk the past several years, Sheets was still been a dependable horse for the Milwaukee Brewers rotation. So it was expected that he would be snapped up and signed to a contract pretty quickly.

Only that never happened.

Word came out last week that Sheets was about to sign an incentive-laden two-year contract with the Texas Rangers, pending the physical exam. And then he had the physical exam.

The Rangers are not signing Sheets to a contract. It seems that the flexor tendon he injured while pitching with the Brewers last season has not healed, and it appears he will be having surgery that will keep him out of baseball for the 2009 season.

So it appears the Ben Sheets mystery is solved. But there's still no answer to the Manny Ramirez mystery.