Trolling through the FA pitchers: Tyler Johnson

After the Big Randy Unit signed with the G-Men, I started to wonder about who's left to be signed.  There are still some talented pitchers, like Sheets and Lowe, but for the most part, it's a Sea of Mediocrity.  (A lot of names I hadn't thought about in some time, or never heard of at all.  I'll think "hey, what about this guy?", click on his Yahoo! stats, and say, "Oh.  He stinks.")

So I was trying to convince myself that Tom Glavine would be a good signing, when I came across one Tyler Johnson, most recently with St. Louis.  Admittedly, there's some risk there, as he missed all of last season with surgery on his pitching arm (rotator cuff, I believe).  Still...

• He's a 27-year-old lefthanded reliever
  
• Although he had an unremarkable 2006 (4.95 ERA), he did pitch well in the postseason, with a 2.45 ERA in 7 innings
• More to the point, he was pretty good in 2007, finishing the season with a 4.03 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, and .217 BAA, all career lows.

Before the injury, you'd think he was on the verge of becoming a decent pitcher.  (Interestingly enough, in 2005 and 2006, he had averaged more than a strikeout per inning. In 2007, his good season, his strikeout rate was down, but so were his walks.  Must...not...use..."pitcher not thrower"...cliche....)

If he were a free agent before the injury, I'd assume he'd be a pretty valuable commodity.  I think it takes a year or two to come back from rotator surgery, so I wouldn't look for him to help anytime soon.  Still, given the lack of decent pitching available now, how expensive said decent pitching is, and Moustache's penchant for finding cheap reclamation projects...I wonder if it's worth sending a Brewer representative over to check on how Johnson's rehab is going.