I had to properly setup my system for unixODBC to talk with FreeTDS:
I did this by configuring FreeTDS the following way: taken from http://www.unixodbc.org/doc/FreeTDS.html
./configure --with-tdsver=8.0 --prefix=/usr/local/freetds --with-unixodbc=/usr/local/unixODBC
make && make install
cd /usr/local/unixODBC/
mkdir templates && cd templates
vim tds.driver.template
[FreeTDS]
Description = v0.91 with protocol v8.0
Driver = /usr/local/freetds/lib/libtdsodbc.so
# Register ODBC Driver
../bin/odbcinst -i -d -f tds.driver.template
# Setup default DB - easily add or remove DSNs
vim tds.datasource.template
[ODBCTestServer]
Driver = FreeTDS
Description = Test
Trace = No
Server = 5.5.5.5
Port = 1433
Database = Test
# Create ODBC data source
../bin/odbcinst -i -d -f tds.datasource.template
/usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check_sql.pl -v -s -d "DBI:ODBC:DRIVER={FreeTDS};Server=5.5.5.5;dbname=test" -U TEST -P PASS
This finally allows for connections to occur.