This is why Carpenter didn’t get drafted until the 190th pick in the Mynci draft and was averaging around 180th in ESPN drafts until this past week, when he jumped to about 140th.

Tough break. But he’ll be back.

The table below shows the number of value players per major league team, the first player(s) taken and in which round.

The results are hardly surprising. The Red Sox, Angels, and Devil Rays should be quite good. The Blue Jays and Padres should be mediocre. However, there are some interesting stories within the data.

• The Angels are tied for second in total number of value players, but lack superstars, with the aging Vladimer Guerrero and John Lackey not taken until the 5th round. The Angels are the only team whose entire starting rotation was drafted or signed by opening day.
• In contrast, the Mets had only ten value players, but three first round draft picks.
• The World Champion Phillies had nine value players, and two first round draft picks. Notably, all but one of the nine players were taken by the end of the 10th round.

I will note that because we use keepers, the first player taken data is somewhat skewed by scarcity. Matt Holiday in Oakland would likely not be a first round pick in an actual draft; but was a keeper for a team with few better options. Except for Carlos Lee, Alfonso Soriano, and Justin Morneau, all the other 1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks listed below were keepers.

For fantasy, how many do you need to care about? Maybe half a dozen. Take away the catchers, and maybe just a couple. First, Keith Law is listing prospects. Some of these players played A and AA ball last season. They are not going to making a major league roster out of spring training.

Others will have great seasons (like last year’s top prospect Evan Longoria), but we don’t know who they are yet.

Many rookie prospects will be drafted in your fantasy league, and many will be dropped. Rookies are notoriously erratic and they quickly lose playing time when they start poorly. You just have to be alert to picking them up when they get hot again.

But it is still a good resource for strategic thinking. First, good teams make good players better. Hitters are more likely to hit with runners on base — and score once they make it on base. Pitchers are more likely to get wins if supported by good hitters and a good bullpen. So thinking of players in the context of the team provides a way to assess off-season moves and rookie call-ups. Second, Baseball Crank is a smart guy who has plenty to say about individual players.

Consider some of the comments from this year’s ESWL (just scroll down):

• Jeff Francis may be harder to replace than most teams’ aces, but he still will never contribute as much positively to the Rockies as a guy in another park who can throw 20 more innings and exert more influence on the game.
• Given that [Yadier] Molina is only 25, it may turn out that he will hit some after all; his brother Bengie didn’t hit until he was 28.
• [Derek] Jeter … seems on the path of slow, gradual decline, with age starting to eat away around the corners of several of his assets, breaking down his weak defense and stripping some of his speed and power. I expect Jeter to continue to be productive into his late 30s, like similar hitters like Paul Molitor and Pete Rose; just a little less like the Jeter of old.
• I can’t add much to the Joba [Chamberlain] saga except to note the obvious that his future path will probably be determined less by his own performance than by Mussina’s and by Mariano’s health.
• Dontrelle Willis has escaped the Marlins’ woeful defense (well, except for Cabrera) that contributed to a terrible .682 DER last year, but defense alone didn’t drive up Willis’ rates of homers, walks and line drives allowed (his HR rate nearly tripled since 2005), nor the decline in his K rate. This season will tell us a lot about whether Willis is healthy or not — if he is, he seems a good turnaround candidate, but the markers pointing to latent arm injuries have been flashing red for a while.

This is a resource most useful for draft preparation, but it is also a good filter for making mid-season adjustments.

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.