A few weeks ago, I heard some welcome news from the world of journalism, which doesn’t happen very often these days. The years-dormant Modern Drunkard Magazine, a Denver-based bimonthly paean to the joys of libation, has finally resumed publication. Speaking for myself, the web edition of the magazine helped get me through college, as I read articles like “You Don’t Know Jack Daniel,” “Andre the Giant: The Greatest Drunk on Earth,” and their most famous article, “The 86 Rules of Boozing.” Most everything is written by editor Frank Kelly Rich — author of the 86 Rules — or writer Rich English, author of the pieces on Andre and Jack. Yesterday evening, I spoke to English about alcohol, sports, and society. He’d like to see Americans loosen up about imbibing, particularly when it comes to their favorite athletes.

English and his colleagues are serious, even when they’re joking. In answer to a Frequently Asked Question on the website, editor Frank Kelly Rich explains, “While there is some satire involved, we believe to the very core of our souls every word we write.” In a 2005 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Rich revealed just how serious he was:

“I drink about eight drinks a day and maybe 30 on a heavy day,” he said cheerfully. “But as long as I remain healthy and happy, I have no intention of slowing down. I mean, when you have something good going, you stick with it, right?”

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“I wouldn’t let a kid at 11-years-old throw a breaking ball, I never threw a breaking ball until I got to high school,” [Tom] Glavine said.

Typically, the rule is that little leaguers shouldn’t be throwing curveballs. The pitch has been blamed for placing too much stress on young elbows, and even a cursory analysis of the mechanics seems to put credence to the credo – it’s a tough pitch to throw. Watching Luke Gregerson throw four sliders out of five pitches to Alex Gonzalez Wednesday night, though, it seemed reasonable to wonder if the slider was also a stressful pitch. Are slider-heavy pitchers more likely to get injured than those that throw the fastball more often?

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Quick note – Frankie Piliere couldn’t make his regularly scheduled chat this week, but we’re making it up to you with our first ever NotGraphs chat at 2 pm eastern, featuring Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry. You won’t want to miss that.

The newest awesome feature rolled out here on FanGraphs this morning – the ability to sort the leaderboards by rookie qualification, which opens up the door for a lot of exploration. Now you can easily check and see whether a Rookie Of The Year deserved his trophy, which seasons had the best crops of rookies (yes, last year was ridiculous, and now we can prove it), or compare rookie seasons from different years side by side.  That was one of the first things I did.

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Let’s get all the Ike Davis caveats out of the way first.

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At the current market value per win, Juan Pierre theoretically owes the White Sox $5 million.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Expanded previews for the day’s three most interesting games: Toronto at Texas, Chicago (AL) at New York (AL), and Kansas City at Cleveland.

2. NERD Game Scores™ for every one of tonight’s games.

3. Some “creative” “use” of the “language.”

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Matt Kemp may have grabbed the early headlines for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but Andre Ethier is the talk of Hollywood right now. Propelled by a 24-game hitting streak, Ethier has been punishing baseballs the entire season. Ethier’s strong start continued Wednesday as he not only extended his hitting streak, but hit the eventual game winning home run in the 10th inning. As with most players on extended hitting streaks, Ethier has benefited from a great deal of luck this season. While that unfortunately makes Ethier a candidate for regression as the season progresses, there are a few interesting nuggets (copyright Peter King) in his stat line that indicate Ethier is completely locked in at the plate.
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There is now “rookie” filtering in the leaderboards.

The criteria to be a rookie is any season where a player has started the season with fewer than 130 at-bats, and fewer than 50 innings pitched. Roster time is not a factor in these, so there may be the occasional player that show up that is not technically a rookie by MLB standards.

What’s neat is you can combine this with the “Multiple Seasons” feature to get the best rookies of any decade (or any time period really). For instance, here are the top rookie seasons by pitcher WAR since 1980.

And here are the top rookie seasons by batter WAR from 2000 to 2009.

It’s worth noting that if you don’t check the “split season” box, it will combine all a player’s seasons when they were rookie eligible and it will not “split out” the seasons.

Anyway, there’s lots of neat ways to filter this data and please let us know if you run into any bugs.

“I heard the jury was still out on… Science…”

–G.O.B. Bluth, Arrested Development

Saunter over to the Shutdown and Meltdown leaderboard and you will find a curious leader: The San Diego Padres.

Yes, the Friars have somehow amassed an absurd 31 shutdowns (SD) while winning a sport-worst nine games. This seems somewhat surprising, because experience has taught me — among many things about cats — that bad teams typically do not need great bullpens. They might have them (*cough* Joakim Soria *cough cough*), but they do not need them because they get destroyed early and often.

Take my hand and follow me down Logic Avenue: The worst teams will not often participate in three-run, save-opportunity games — or even one-run games. Instead they will presumably watch this and employ a slew of mop-up long men who do not affect the game’s already-decided outcome. I mean, c’mon, three-fifths of the Royals rotation is likely to allow five runs before finishing the 6th inning. What can a bulllpen possibly do when the score is 5 to -1?

In the same stroke of logic, wouldn’t we expect the best teams to have fewer save opportunities? Unlike impressively mediocre teams, like the Chicago Cubs, the New York Yankees spend a good deal of time slapping homers and trouncing weaklings. As a result, we should expect they play fewer close games than the Cubs, who must crawl, snarl, and curse their way into every victory and loss.

Well, that may be logical, but it’s not entirely correct.
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To say that Rafael Soriano has struggled so far this season would be akin to saying Babe Ruth was a decent ballplayer: you’d technically be right, but off by multiple factors of ten. Soriano has struggled mightily since making his Yankee debut, allowing at least one baserunner in nine of his ten appearances, and posting an “Ouch!” inducing 7.84 ERA and 5.55 FIP. He has three meltdowns already this season (only had four total in 2010), and he’s blown two Yankee leads: once on April 5th against the Twins and once last night against the White Sox. Last night was particularly painful, as Soriano plunked Carlos Quentin with a slider and then grooved a fastball down the heart of the plate to Paul Konerko. I don’t think I need to tell you where that pitch ended up.

Since it’s so early in the season, it’s easy to write off these struggles as relatively unimportant; odds are, this is just a slump and Soriano will be his normal, dominant self for the rest of the year. Soriano has only thrown 10 innings this year, so it’s way too early to begin putting credence in his ERA, FIP, or xFIP. But while that may be true, I don’t like leaving analyses at this level; I want to know why Soriano is slumping now. Is this simply a matter of bad luck? Has he changed his pitching approach? Is he struggling with any of his pitches?

To the Pitch F/x data we go!

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For the second year running, the Padres look to have one of the best bullpens in baseball. After posting a 2.75 ERA and 2.95 FIP as part of an unlikely 90-win season in 2010, the Padres are doing it again in 2011, with a 2.33 ERA and 2.85 FIP out of the gates. Although Heath Bell is the headliner of the group, his opening act, Mike Adams, deserves just as much credit. His ascension from total baseball obscurity was detailed excellently by SBNation’s Grant Brisbee today. The man just keeps getting better, too: since 2010, Adams has a 1.60 ERA and 2.31 FIP, both in the top 10 among pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched in that span.

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