Jose Mesa had 43 saves, two fewer than Eric Gagne, but at a much lower cost at the draft. Rick Stewart/Getty Images

By Jon Stulberg, Special to SI.com

It's early in the second round of your 5x5 league draft and your pick is in. The commissioner starts to read it off. With the 17th selection in this year's draft, the Broadway Bombers select Eric ... HOLD IT! If the next word out of the commissioner's mouth isn't Chavez, you've made a huge mistake.

If you play in a 5x5 league with daily transactions, using an early-round selection on a closer is never a wise move. Yes, I know how many saves Gagne had last year. I know he had a very good ERA and WHIP last year and was ridiculously low in both categories in 2003, and I know he struck out an insane number of batters for a closer. But is he worth it? I say no. So the question becomes how early do you take a closer?

What you want most from your closer is saves. Everything else you get from them is gravy. Now Gagne gets 45-plus saves three years in a row (50-plus in '02 and '03). He's the best in the business for that category. But the question remains, how important is it to get that one category?

Let's look at it from another perspective. Will you be able to get another third baseman who will hit .280 with 35 homers, 100 runs and 100 RBIs, 10 rounds later in the draft? How about someone who will even get 75 percent of those numbers? The answer according to the Magic 8-ball is "seems unlikely." Now ask yourself, what are the chances of getting someone who will save 30 games? Magic 8-ball says "outlook good."

Closers lose their jobs all the time. If you pay attention to preseason rankings and analysis, chances are you've already drafted the setup men for those teams. In 2003, I had Jose Valverde, Joe Borowski, Damaso Marte, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Octavio Dotel and Tim Worrell at or near the top of my must have setup men list. In 2004, Worrell and Marte appeared again, along with BJ Ryan, Shingo Takatsu and Tom Gordon. The rewards were astounding.

How many third basemen came out of nowhere to put up any stats? Juan Uribe? Pedro Feliz? In other words, slim pickings. Even if you guess wrong on a setup man like David Riske, there's always players that come out of the woodwork and if you're quick to make pickups in your league, you can capitalize. Guys like Takatsu, Jason Frasor, Greg Aquino, Jeremy Affeldt, Bob Wickman and J.J. Putz provided some nice returns for the team looking for saves, and most of them were midseason free-agent pickups.

But what about Gagne's contribution to my ERA and WHIP totals, aren't they significant? Well, let's take a team that has 1,300 innings pitched with one more open pitching spot. Now let's say the team has a 3.12 ERA and 1.25 WHIP before taking that last pitcher into account. Now let's look at how those team numbers change when you add Gagne versus Tom Gordon.

With Gagne: ERA=3.07; WHIP=1.23
With Gordon: ERA=3.06; WHIP=1.23

Pretty shocking, huh? You used a second-round pick on a pitcher thinking his ERA and WHIP would significantly improve your team. Now would you use your second-round pick just to get 45-plus saves when you could use a 15th-round pick or later on Gordon and a 10th-12th-round pick on Danny Graves? Clearly your answer is no. Even if we use Gagne's insane numbers from 2003, the team ERA becomes 3.01 and the team WHIP 1.22. So you used a second-round pick and saved .05 in ERA and .01 in WHIP. Hardly the astounding effect you expected.

Now I know Gordon isn't going to get you those 45 saves so you still need to draft some closers, but the point is you can wait much longer before selecting one. Look at the returns from 2004 for such later selections like Francisco Cordero, Armando Benitez, Joe Nathan, Danny Graves, Jose Mesa and Danny Kolb. Each one had 39 saves or more and the return on investment was greater than Gagne. You can get very high K/inning returns on the setup men like Gordon so even that cancels some of the benefit of Gagne's 114 K's.

All you want out of your bullpen is saves and with many more teams in the majors than in your league, there are plenty of saves to go around. Build your bullpen with middle-of-the-road closers and stud setup men much later in the draft and grab the stud hitters early. Closers don't log significant innings to help your ERA and WHIP. Put another way, would you draft Juan Pierre in the second round if he only had 100 at-bats for his .300 average but still stole 60 bases? No, you'd be calling him a one-category player. Therefore, don't do the same with Gagne. Make sure that Eric is Chavez and watch the rest of the league moan while looking up at you in the standings.

Jon Stulberg shares his insightful fantasy baseball analysis on FantasyBaseball.com. He will also be providing articles for the upcoming Fantasy Baseball University series and in the 300+ page FantasyBaseball.com Draft Guide -- Coming Soon!