It's important to bear in mind that both contracts are old enough that (imo) the expected AAV has probably gone up quite a bit, MLB salary inflation is about 10%, so there would be a lot of adjustment. Last year, I asked one of the authors of "The Book" about Sheets' value on the open market after the 2008 season: http://rluzinski.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-will-ben-sheets-be-worth.html Let's take Tango's +.25 WAR (wins above reserve) per 9IP estimate for Sheets at face value. A big part of the equation is trying to estimate how many innings you should reasonably expect from him going forward. Conservatively, we'll use 150 innings/year for Sheets (and really, probably any 30 year old pitcher?). That's .25 WAR / 9IP x 150 IP = ~ 4 wins above reserve per year. Using his chart (which was derived from seeing how much teams have been willing to spend for a player at x WAR on the open market): http://www.tangotiger.net/salary2008.html 3 Years: $50.5 mil 4 Years: $65.2 mil 5 Years: $78 mil That's 2008 numbers, but let's pretend Melvin could easily get that 10% home discount from Sheets. That's about $16 mil per year, which is basically the minimum he's going to get with a solid 2008, IMO. Some team might be overly optimistic and assume 200 innings per year, and could offer Sheets $20 mil a year. No thanks. I think we have to assume that 4 years, $60 mil is the minimum realistic offer Melvin would have a chance of Sheets accepting. It will probably take more, though. Sheets knows that this may be his last big payday.