Over his last 3 starts, Ivan Nova has gone 2-0 with a 1.35 ERA in 20 innings, to push his overall ERA to 4.08 and give some people hope that he can be a solid starter at the rear of the Yankee rotation. However, a look at his peripherals shows that his positive results may be a bit of a mirage, and that his skill level lies closer to his 4.61 xFIP than his ERA.
| Season | Team | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | BABIP | LOB% | GB% | HR/FB | ERA | FIP | xFIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Yankees (R) | 43 | 7.53 | 1.47 | 1.05 | 0.267 | 84.60% | 2.72 | 3.73 | |||
| 2007 | Yankees (A) | 99.1 | 4.89 | 2.81 | 0.72 | 0.331 | 64.00% | 4.98 | 4.28 | |||
| 2008 | Yankees (A+) | 148.2 | 6.6 | 2.78 | 0.36 | 0.347 | 66.20% | 4.36 | 3.37 | |||
| 2009 | Yankees (AA) | 72.1 | 5.85 | 3.86 | 0.37 | 0.279 | 75.70% | 2.36 | 3.81 | |||
| 2009 | Yankees (AAA) | 67 | 5.78 | 3.76 | 0.54 | 0.318 | 65.70% | 5.1 | 4.08 | |||
| 2010 | Yankees (AAA) | 145 | 7.14 | 2.98 | 0.62 | 0.298 | 79.00% | 2.86 | 3.54 | |||
| 2010 | Yankees | 42 | 5.57 | 3.64 | 0.86 | 0.292 | 70.90% | 51.40% | 9.50% | 4.5 | 4.36 | 4.35 |
| 2011 | Yankees | 35.1 | 4.58 | 4.08 | 0.25 | 0.272 | 67.90% | 54.00% | 2.80% | 4.08 | 3.81 | 4.61 |
The first thing you’ll notice is that he strikes out an absurdly low number of batters for a pitcher with his stuff. This is not a new issue, as his minor league K-rate was equally unimpressive (6.3/9), and I would not expect him to suddenly start striking out a lot more batters at the major league level. Among the 127 pitchers who were good enough to throw at least 120 innings in the majors last season, only 6 had a worse K-rate than the one Nova is sporting right now, and his career K-rate of 5.12 per 9 innings would have tied him for 107th in baseball. Unlike some of the pitchers who have been able to find success without strikeouts, Nova compounds the problem by walking plenty of hitters, with a 3.84 rate thus far in his career. Of pitchers who struck out fewer than 5.5 batters per 9 innings last season, only Aaron Cook and Mitch Talbot walked that many, and neither was particularly successful in 2010. To be honest, it was difficult to find anyone who was successful in MLB last year with the K and BB tendencies that Nova has exhibited.
Moving on to batted ball data, Nova has gotten lucky in terms of limiting home runs thus far, as he has allowed home runs on an unsustainably low 2.8% of flyballs. While he has always been able to keep his home run rate (HR/9) low, it should experience something of a correction over the coming months, which will drive his ERA up towards the 4.60 number suggested above.
Finally, a look at groundball rate provides what can be Nova’s saving grace. Nova is inducing grounders on 54.1% of batted balls, which would have placed him 12th last season among pitchers with at least 120 IP. Inducing ground balls can help limit big innings and erase baserunners through double plays, which somewhat mitigates Nova’s inability to avoid contact and his penchant for issuing free passes. Without that ability, Nova would not be a MLB quality starter, but the GB% is good enough that he should be able to have success as a back of the rotation hurler.
I am not saying that Nova will never be better than a 4.4-4.6 ERA #4 starter. If he can find a way to increase his strikeouts, limit his walks, or induce even more grounders, he should be able to take the next step and become a mid-rotation guy for a god team. But as of now, for 2011, I do not think it is realistic to expect him to sustain his recent performance or finish the season with a stat line quite as good as his current ERA might suggest.
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In addition to the high ground ball rate, Nova has a very low LD% which suggests that while he’s not causing batters to swing and miss hitters aren’t making good solid contact against him. Cone was talking about how impressed he was with the amount of movement that Nova gets on his two seamer. So hopefully, there’s more to the low LD % and low HR/FB ratio than just luck and small samples. If that’s the case, maybe it is a repeatable skill and he won’t regress to the mean as much as you would argue. I think a lot of people had a tendency to undervalue Wang based on his low K’s and maybe the same is true for Nova. I don’t know. That very well could be wishful thinking.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
I think that while it is certainly possible that Nova induces weaker contact than most pitchers, I wouldn’t bet on it. That said, you are not the first to compare Nova to Wang, Steve did it earlier this year:
https://yankeeanalysts.com/2011/01/rethinking-ivan-novas-ceiling-24352
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bg90027 Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
I strongly suspect that Nova has induced weaker contact which resulted in a low HR/FB ratio, one ofthe league best LD%’s (14.2% down from 18.2% last year) and a low BABIP against of .272. The question to me is not whether he has induced weaker contact but whether that is purely chance or repeatable skill based on movement. Smarter people than I say HR/FB and LD% variance from the norm is chance, and isn’t that the logical basis for the higher xFIP you site. I just wonder if these corrections really work for pitchers like Wang, Nova, or (to go way back into my youth) Tommy John.
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While a 4.60 ERA is definitely not great, from a rookie back of the rotation pitcher, I would be happy with that over 175 innings in the AL East.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Oh, me too. Sign me up for that.
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Let me ask you this question Moshe, with the peripherals you laid out if the Twins hypothetically offered us the ST rumor of Nova and Joba for Liriano would you take it?
Joba has shown real ability in the pen again but he isn’t back to his 07 level of averaging 97 MPH, and since the Yankees are never going to let him start, and Soriano will be here for 3 years what’s his real total value. Also when you consider that you have Robertson to take over his role, it diminishes the lose you feel.
With the way Liriano has looked this year I have leaned back and forth on this, but the talent certainly warrants the risk in my opinion.
I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about a deal with risk but upside, not just today but down the road.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 7:11 pm
If Liriano passed a physical, I’d make that deal. Too much upside there to turn it down. Now, if you told me the Yankees would consider putting Joba back in the rotation, that might be a different story.
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T.O. Chris Reply:
May 11th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
I think that is what always gets me, the fact that I would put him back in the rotation. I just don’t believe the Yankees will even ever try it again, you’d hate to see Chamberlain go to Minnesota and fulfill any level of the starting talent he has. However can you really feel that bad about it when you know it was never an option for your team.
I personally think, as I believe you do, that Joba would have been just as good an option this season as Freddy Garcia.
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Nova has a 3.15 BB/9 and 4.05 K/9 over his last 3 starts. Walks down, but so are strikeouts. Shit, at least he’s going deeper into games…. I’ll take that much
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This is a great example of the difficulty of looking at minor league numbers, since most players are developing and have yet to find a formula for success. Early on, the Yanks thought Nova should be a strikeout pitcher. He has the stuff to do it, but for whatever reason it never translated for him. He went to the Padres, they didn’t like him either, and he came back with a renewed aggressiveness and reinvented himself as a power sinkerballer. He’s been terrific ever since. That’s why I throw out those early numbers, they don’t tell us who he is today. The most relevant numbers for Nova are those since his breakout season last year. He hadn’t quite put things before then, which is why he wasn’t high on the prospect radar and was left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft.
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Actually all he has to do is decrease the BB%…
If he can lesser walk rate and maintain the GB%, he can be the next Wang…
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