I see Arroyo as kind of a younger John Burkett when he was with the Red Sox. Pardon me if this is dumb, but its been a long week and I'm frazzled. Anyhoo, we paid Burkett 5.5 mil/year for 2002 and 2003.
His stats over that period were:
2002 37 BOS AL 13 8 29 29 1 1 0 0 173.0 199 93 87 25 50 124 8 2 760 5 1 4.53 4.42 98 1.439
2003 38 BOS AL 12 9 32 30 1 0 1 0 181.7 202 108 104 20 47 107 9 3 785 1 0 5.15 4.71 91 1.371
and he pitched 5th in the rotation I believe. Decent production out of the #5 guy, and we were paying him 1.5 more than Arroyo, who has promise to be much better for us.
Alright I have no idea where this is going. Arroyo and Burkett are (were) both decent pitchers with good (if not great) stuff for a #5 guy and not too expensive.