This is probably not the best way to counter the Athletics finally wrangling Ben Sheets, but the Cardinals have signed Rich Hill to a minor league deal and invited him to Spring Training. Hill is an iffy-fastball/big-curveball left-hander who struck out a ton of Major League hitters in a great season and a half as a late-blooming Cubs prospect and then totally lost the plate in 2008.
His particular bout with control problems comes in a good-news/bad-news couplet. Good news: it was injury-related! Bad news: It's because he tore his labrum!
Shoulder surgery is debilitating enough that it does not have a borderline Hall of Fame namesake like elbow surgery does—if you wanted to pick a representative case, at this point, you might consider calling it Bud Smith Surgery. But as reclamation projects go Hill is cheaper than fellow high-strikeout/bad-labrum lefty Erik Bedard, and unless the Cardinals lined up five starting pitching prospects who are ready to go at Memphis while Future Redbirds wasn't looking there's no harm in trying these guys out.