I have a question.. if there are 30 teams, shouldn't there be 30 #1 pitchers? Or, is that too simplistic?

I notice from a lot of different prospect analyses that there are very few potential #1's out there, probably only 4: Cain, Verlander, Billingsley, and Liriano. Even highly thought of pitchers like Lester, Olsen, etc. do not project as "#1 starters". Where do they all come from?

I will now try to list my top 30 starters for 2006 (in no particular order), with no prospects and excluding Clemens, to see if I think they are all #1's...

Johan Santana
Roy Oswalt
John Smoltz
Pedro Martinez
Dontrelle Willis
Mark Prior
Carlos Zambrano
Chris Carpenter
Ben Sheets
Jake Peavy
Jason Schmidt
Randy Johnson
Josh Beckett
Roy Halladay
A.J. Burnett
Mark Buerhle
Felix Hernandez
Bartolo Colon
Rich Harden
Andy Pettitte
Tim Hudson
Barry Zito
John Patterson
John Lackey
Jeremy Bonderman
Brandon Webb
Kevin Millwood
Curt Schilling
C.C. Sabathia
Dan Haren

In retrospect, I'd say there are about 20-22 sure-fire #1 pitchers (depending on how you feel about guys like Burnett, Zito, Hudson, and Pettitte) with Patterson, Lackey, Bonderman, Scott Kazmir, and Oliver Perez representing some potential #1 guys. I wouldn't consider Webb, Millwood, Schilling, Sabathia, and Haren to be shutdown #1-type guys, either, but they seem to be in the mix of the top 30, so maybe they should be considered #1 starters.

Long post... whew!