Milwaukee Brewers: Ben Sheets pitched lights out….on a bad team

Had Ben Sheets been pitching for a contending team instead of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2004, he would have been the Cy Young winner on a World Series team.

The 2004 version of the Milwaukee Brewers were bad. The 2004 version of Ben Sheets was extremely good. The numbers Sheets put up in his ’04 season were unlike any he had done before and were borderline historic.

Sheets was a first round pick in 1999 who debuted two years later and was an average pitcher his first few years in the league. His sub-500 record can be attributed to the bad Brewers teams he was on, but his earned run average was always around four and a half. He walked three guys per nine innings and struck out on average a little more than six guys per nine innings. Nothing spectacular.

In 2004, Sheets’ fourth year with the Brewers, something clicked. He became one of the most dominant pitchers in the league. His accuracy became pinpoint, walking fewer batters than ever before, while pitching several more innings. He was giving up fewer hits per nine innings. Less traffic on the base paths led to him shaving a run and a half off his ERA.

The rate with which his strikeouts increased and his walks decreased was of epic proportions. Sheets’ K/BB ratio was 8.25, the eighth best mark of all-time

Sheets did a wonderful job of keeping runners off base, and letting even fewer score. He was undone by his offense however, and his win/loss record reflected this. He finished 12-14 and in 11 of those losses his team scored two runs or fewer, including being shutout on four occasions.

The Brewers would lose 94 games and finish in sixth place in the division for the third straight year. They would reward Ben Sheets following the season with a 4 year/$38.5M contract.

After that point Sheets was a decent pitcher though he never pitched two hundred innings again, or struck out two hundred hitters. His ERA was never in the twos and in any full season his K/BB ration never higher than 5.64.

After Tommy John surgery took his 2009 away, Sheets pitched for the Oakland A’s, winning a career high 13 games. More arm troubles set in and Sheets made only nine starts his final season in the majors, with the Atlanta Braves.

Sheets pitched ten years total, and for one of them, he was one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. Too bad Ben Sheets couldn’t duplicate his successes of 2004.