Everyone in the pen is fickle but Farnsworth

Last year, everyone nearly shit their pants with disgust when the Royals signed Kyle Farnsworth to a 2-year contract that made absolutely no sense to anybody except Dayton Moore. And, yes, Farnsworth sucked last year.

But we were VERY happy when the Royals signed Juan Cruz to a two-year contract. Cruz sucked and got hurt last year -- which brings us to the point of this post. It's easy to see that a guy like Farnsworth is going to suck, but it's harder to predict which relievers are going to be good from year-to-year. Bullpens are one of the most fickle things in a fickle sport. And that's why it's stupid to throw money at veteran relievers who have been decent to good (or in Farnsworth's case: atrocious to OK).

Anyway, having apparently realized this, Dayton has been picking arms off the scrap heap all offseason. Maybe a few of them will turn out to be good, right? Here's a list of the pitchers acquired so far since November:

Matt Herges
John Parrish (L)
Nelson Payano (who is this guy?)
Philip Humber
Francisco Rosario (any good?)
Bruce Chen (L)
Adam Bostock (L) (promising?)
Devon Lowery
Edgar Osuna (L)
Josh Rupe
Bryan Bullington
Juan Abreu (what about this guy?)
Jorge Campillo (maybe?)
Brad Thompson

How would you rank these guys in terms of helping the 2010 Royals? Who are the top 5? We'd start with the Rule 5 kid, Osuna. From there, we don't know.

P.S. Our prediction is that Cruz rebounds and has a fantastic year while Farnsworth is terrible again.

P.P.S. Hell, even Soria could go fickle on us. Very few relievers aside from the likes of Rivera and Nathan sustain a high level effectiveness year after year. (But that's probably because most are failed starters with limited ability; Soria is a Rule 5 guy who never got a chance to fail at starting; he's probably got less of a chance of flaming out.)

P.P.P.S. In addition to the Cruz move last year, we also were in support of the Coco Crisp trade and, at the time, we didn't think the Jacobs trade was the disaster it turned out to be. Geez, Dayton was only trading a couple of fickle relievers for those guys...