Ben Sheets told Tom Haudricourt that he's pretty much dead set on testing the free agent waters after this season. Before the season started, General Manager Doug Melvin made his decision to wait out the year before negating a new contract with Sheets public. At the time, few would have argued with his decision. Sheets has made more than a half dozen trips to the disabled list since singing his 4 year, 42 million dollar deal in 2005 and that has somewhat soured most people's outlook on him. This year Sheets has been what Brewer fans hoped he would be the whole contract. His performance has him near the top of most early lists for the CyYoung award.Of course, the year is still less than half gone and there is still time for an injury to happen, but so far, so good.

Sheets repeated injuries put the Brewers in a tough position in terms of what they were going to do with him. To have made a the kind of offer it would have taken to keep Sheets before the season would have been a very high risk and potentially high reward decision. Now it looks like Sheets will be on the market and taking the highest bid  to acquire his services for 2009 and beyond. Assuming he stays reasonably healthy the remainder of the year, the Brewers will have to outbid the big markets for Sheets services. That almost certainly means that the cost will exceed what the Brewers would be willing to spend to keep Sheets, though it doesn't guarantee it.

With the Brewers right in the thick of the playoff race at the moment, it wouldn't make sense to trade Sheets for prospects at this point. Perhaps if they fall totally out of the race, but that becomes less likely with each passing day and win. This leaves the Brewers with only one real choice at this point: let him play out his contract this year and then take the compensatory draft picks at the end of the year if they're outbid, which they almost certainly will be.

Moving forward this year, the Brewers need to look long and hard at several good starters who may be on the market this year but who will not be free agents at the end of the season. Rich Harden of the A's and Eric Bedard of the Mariners would both provide a boost to this years rotation and help soften the blow of Sheets departure next year. It is true that the Brewers will almost certainly have Yovanni Gallardo back in the fold, but the rotation will still be a bit thin if they don't make another move.

It'll be sad to see Sheets take his dominating stuff elsewhere, but the reality is that he will probably get more than this team can afford to risk on him. The best thing that can happen now is for the rest of the squad to pick up their games and give him one hell of a send off.