On the Mynci bulletin board, my brother proposes doing something about closers:

Someday I hope the Mynci has the epiphany and declares a team can only have a maximum of 2 closers on its active roster. In a 12 team league all teams would have 2 closers on their roster. The contest would then come down to who had the better closers (and luck) rather than who prioritized closers in the draft and got lucky with injuries ( BJ Ryan anyone?) This change would also place a greater emphasis on incorporating middle relievers on one’s roster since the remaining relief pitcher positions would have to be filled by non-closers.

My own preference would be to combine holds and saves into a single aggregate category. That would greatly expand the pool of pitchers that could profitably help a team, without requiring superhuman efforts from the league commissioner to keep teams from drafting (or signing) more than two closers.

The way it is now, when a closer goes down, an owner is out of luck:

It’s a given that every closer and likely closer will be drafted. This means one must decide in March whether or not he even wishes to compete for saves and then gamble that the closer(s) he drafts stay healthy….

Putting a quota on the number of closers per roster would ensure there was always a pool of undrafted closers, which would ensure that every team would be able to compete for this category. Some teams would still have better closers than others but it would no longer be a binary issue. The luck of getting save chances would be the same. What would be remedied is the catastrophic bad luck of having a highly drafted closer go down with an injury — which seems to happen all too often.

The result is a huge spread between the haves and have-nots. Three weeks into the season, the Mynci saves category ranges from 0 to 17:

0, 1, 1, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10, 10, 12, 15, 17

The bottom three teams have one active closer between them. The top three teams in saves have (respectively) five, three, and four closers. The luck of the draw is that the Bus (17) and Buckets (12) both used later picks to draft marginal closers that have (so far) succeeded, while the Juicers (15) drafted three studs that have (so far) avoided injury. Here’s how I ended up with a healthy, effective bullpen:

61. Billy Wagner, NYM (Round 6)
181. Brad Lidge, Phi (Round 16)
204. George Sherrill, Bal (Round 17)
228. C.J. Wilson, Tex (Round 19)

Update: Sometimes you can learn things just by checking. ESPN does have a Saves + Holds category. Make note for next year.