One of the things I found in my hunt through AfDs for invalid nominations and speedies was that there was a very, very small portion of the 117 articles I looked through that needed to be there. 15 or so should have been slam dunk keeps, or at least merges. Another good chunk were speedies. An equally large chunk, however, were, if not speedies, at least things that any sensible person who watches AfD for a day or two could determine the result of in advance. If we add "verifiability" as a speedy criterion, the number that could be speedied goes to around 85%, I think.
Verifiability is already a reason to move something to the talk page, and a blank article is certainly a speedy (unless it was created by an admin), isn't it?