Arrieta Returning

Gregg Berhalter and the Columbus Crew announced today that Jairo Arrieta will be returning to the team for a second full season.

After setting the league on fire in 2012, Jairo'S productivity slowed down a bit in 2013. Some of his slow down was due to call ups to the Costa Rican national team and some due to injury (there was also some poor man management sprinkled in).

Now that Arrieta has played a measurable amount of minutes in MLS (3396) we know what to expect.

There are three things I know for sure you will get with this player:

1. Effort
2. Passion to play in Columbus
3. 0.32 Goals per 90 minutes

That goal rate is fairly average for a starting MLS attacking player (his assist rate is slightly better than replacement level). Combine that with Dominic Oduro's rate of 0.41 over the past two years and you get about 3 goals from the two of them every 450 minutes played (if they can both co-exist in the same lineup, which is still a bit of a question mark).

QUICK THOUGHTS

Most people are going to remember this past year with Arrieta but he is a player that is capable of pretty outstanding things in this league and with him hungry to make the trip to the World Cup we might see that return to form.

That said; this latest move puts the Crew at 24 players and still on the hunt for another goal scorer because even top form Oduro, Arrieta and Federico Higuain are not going to get this team to 47-50 goals on the year (which should be the target).

It does put the team on the right track, however. The alternative of not having a player like him wrapped up for next year would have been a bit scary.

I don't have any solid estimates to give on his salary other than to say it will be less than his previous deal that was around the $225k range.