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Barnett: Breaking Down the Factors of Ivan Nova’s Turnaround With the Pirates

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Please join me in welcoming Travis Barnett as the newest writer to Pirates Prospects. Travis will be providing a weekly column on the Pirates with statistical analysis combined with feedback from the MLB clubhouse via Alan Saunders. I’m very excited to see what Travis will bring to the site, and look forward to more articles like this one. I’ll shut up now and let you get to it. – Tim Williams

Entering this off-season, the Ivan Nova camp was reportedly pursuing a deal in the neighborhood of five years and $70 million.  It seemed like a stretch at the time, even with the dearth of starting pitchers available on the free agent market, but nevertheless, many still believed Nova could earn a hefty payday after posting a stellar 3.06 ERA in eleven starts for the Pirates last season.

For instance, David Cameron of Fangraphs suggested a four-year deal worth $56 million was a more realistic expectation for a Nova deal, but he qualified that with the following commentary: “In a year, it’s either going to look like genius or foolishness, with the in between options looking less likely.”

Yet, Nova ultimately didn’t get anywhere near that number, signing a contract much lower than anyone anticipated as he elected to return to Pittsburgh at a mere $26 million over three years. It seems that no matter how spectacular Nova looked for two months in a Pirates jersey, teams apparently couldn’t overlook the larger body of work that suggested Nova was not a successful starting pitcher. Nova’s desire to return to Pittsburgh played a big role in his deal, but you have to wonder what would have happened if a team came to him with a contract closer to his normal asking price.

Well, we are now two weeks and three Nova starts into the season, and those other teams are probably wondering why they balked at signing Nova for more than the Pirates gave him.  After all, even if he does not sustain the current torrid pace, the underlying reasons why he has been effective in Pittsburgh are becoming increasingly evident and promising.  So let’s take some time to delve into those underlying factors in Ivan Nova’s success.

A more subtle curve

The curveball has long been a central piece of Nova’s repertoire as he’s utilized the hook at least 22 percent of the time in each of his big league seasons, and the results have generally been quite favorable. In fact, the pitch regularly ranked among the league’s best curveball in whiffs per swing, peaking at a league best 46 percent for the 2013 season.

Despite the effectiveness of the pitch, neither the horizontal or vertical movement would be characterized as elite, but as you can see below, the combination of the solid horizontal movement and the sharp vertical break had little trouble baffling hitters:

Nova- July 2013

Nova’s curveball excelled not only at inducing whiffs, but also at limiting run production; unfortunately, his fastballs were making opposing hitters look like Miguel Cabrera in his prime.  Still, in the midst of bouts of inconsistency, he continued to tantalize Yankees’ fans, reeling off a streak of 15 consecutive wins  between 2011 and 2012 and recording a 3.10 ERA during 2013.

In his fourth start of the 2014 season, his career took an all too common detour after experiencing elbow soreness that was later revealed to be a torn ulnar collateral ligament.  He would undergo Tommy John Surgery not long after, beginning what has been long journey back to being an effective starter.

After Nova returned in June 2015, he struggled to recapture the feel and command of his pitches as he tried to acclimate once again to major league hitters. Meanwhile, the hook remained proficient, but it wasn’t darting away from right-handed hitters the way it used to. As a result, it no longer induced ground balls and whiffs at a superb rate.

Those persistent struggles initially forced the Yankees to shift Nova to the bullpen the following season, but he still couldn’t seem to recover the movement on his curveball, which now coupled the decline in horizontal movement with a decline in vertical break. Thankfully, this wasn’t the end of movement shifts in Nova’s curveball as it continued to change following his trade to the Bucs.

As the chart depicts, the break of the curveball is much more subtle, which is a peculiar move in the evolution of a curveball, but as it turns out, at least in the short-term, that movement was a boon to Nova’s game.  This “new curveball” registered the highest chase rate of his career and sent the whiff rate soaring fairly close to its peak point.  If you’re curious to see the different, more subtle look, compare the curveball in this GIF from last season to the previous GIF.

As with any pitch, there is some fluctuation in range of movement, so it is not necessarily the case that he won’t occasionally work in a more of sweeping hook, but expect Nova’s hook to more frequent resemble this one.

Regardless, Alan Saunders had an opportunity to ask Nova about this drastic change in movement.

“It’s getting better,” Nova said. “It’s different this year, too, early. But as you continue to pitch it gets better and better and better. Last year, it was a good pitch for me. I was working really hard in the pen and applying it to the game. This year will be no different.”

Nova also echoed that his trust in the pitch has given him confidence to utilize it more frequently; in particular, he started using it nearly half the time when he was ahead in the count or the batter was sitting with two strikes. Early in his career, Nova preferred to try and attack right-handed hitters with a heavy dose of the four-seam fastball in that same situation with meager results.

In September 2016, his curveball Put Away Rate, which measures the execution of this in terms of inducing whiffs when a hitter has two strikes, trailed only Jon Lester’s curveball at 40 percent. It wasn’t nearly that high every month, but there’s no question the change has been effective.

A quick glance at the Fangraphs pitch values will suggest the contrary in light of his pre-Tommy John Surgery pitch values, and while that holds some sobering weight, his “new curveball” seems to be playing with the rest of his arsenal in a more effective way through some combination of location, tunneling, and sequencing. It may not ever consistently resemble Nova’s old hook in appearance or sabermetrics, but it is hard to argue with the end results or the confidence Nova has in the more subtle curve.

A more than sufficient arsenal

According to Eno Sarris, one of the primary reasons for skepticism in regards to Ivan Nova’s performance moving forward is essentially that he lacks the repertoire to be successful as the game advances. Sarris and others have often cited the work of Mitchel Lictman on the Times Through the Order Penalty, a statistic split that focuses on measuring the regression of a pitcher the more times a lineup faces him in a particular game.  Additional work by Lichtman on the subject centers on fastball heavy pitchers and their inability to keep hitters off-balance as the game progresses because the lack of diversity in their offerings renders them more predictable to a lineup. If you recall, this was both Juan Nicasio’s downfall and one of Tyler Glasnow’s struggles last season.

In regards to Nova and the TTOP, Ray Searage expressed confidence in the diversity of Nova’s repertoire, citing opening day as an example,

“Opening day, he didn’t have much of a curveball,” Searage said. “It came later on. But he was able to throw his [two-seam] fastball to both sides of the plate and also elevate in the strike zone with [the four-seam]. That’s what kept [the Braves] off. The curveball came in the later innings. … With a four-seamer and a two-seamer that can be thrown to both sides of the plate, the curveball and the changeup, he’s going to keep hitters off-balance.”

Searage’s words also touch on something that Lichtman’s pieces gloss over; it lumps four-seamers and two-seamers together without signaling the possible effect these two pitches have on keeping a hitter off-balance. All of the other data revealed a positive correlation between the number of offerings in a pitcher’s repertoire and the results the additional times through the order, so it should on some level alleviate fears that Nova doesn’t possess enough to pitch deep into games.

Now, Nova did make some adjustments to the level of usage for certain pitches once he joined Pittsburgh, tossing the four-seamer only about 7% of the time.  Remarkably, less of the four-seamer was a strong decision for Nova because the pitch that had long been destroyed by opposing hitters saw it’s slugging percentage crater to an unbelievable .267.

Before the elbow injury, it is startling to see that Nova was primarily a four-seam guy, yet he evidently felt the need to flip his four-seam and sinker usage. Searage suggested this was a capability the team noticed when they went out and acquired him.

“When we scouted him, we knew the possibilities were there [to throw more two-seamers],” Searage said. “As a starter as opposed to a reliever, he didn’t have to strike out everybody. He could get ground ball outs. …  It just came to fruition last year when we put him in the rotation. It’s a different mindset than coming in from the pen. We were just able to secure that a little bit more, but it was already in there.”

Nova has been more liberal with the four-seamer thus far in 2017, so it will be intriguing to see if Searage and company push him back in the direction last season’s pitch usage.

The overblown home run problem

It wasn’t merely tweaks to Ivan Nova’s arsenal that contributed to his success; for one, there was the more obvious, yet, unexpected to this degree, precipitous decline in home run rate.  In fact, he gave up just four home runs in a Pirates jersey last season, and two of those were in his debut against the Reds. Some have attributed it to luck that’s bound to correct itself, but I would contend that there are a couple of reasons suggesting that Nova could continue to excel at keeping the ball in the park.

First of all, Nova was in about as bad of a pitching situation as you could be in as a big league pitcher when it comes to giving up home runs.  Yankee Stadium ranks among the worst in Home Run Factor, and Yankees’ arms don’t even catch a break in their away games since Camden Yards and the Rogers Center are also among the most hitter friendly ballparks. This means that the Yankees’ pitchers annually toss about a 100 games in three of the most dangerous parks.

To be more precise in stating this effect upon Nova, Fangraphs points out that the Yankees home run ballpark factor last season equated to roughly 10 percent more homers than that of PNC Park during Nova’s time with each respective club.

Furthermore, by simply overlaying PNC Park with Yankee Stadium, we can see how drastically the change in scenery was for Nova.

Although the short porch in right field at Yankee stadium and the steep left field confines at PNC contributed to Nova’s HR/FB rate drop, there seems to be more going on behind the scenes.  Take a look at Nova’s HR/FB rate by season:

The astronomical number in 2014 should be taken with a grain of salt considering it represents only four games with one those being a four home run performance against the Rays.

Nova rebounded nicely from a home run prone 2012, which was primarily the result of struggles against southpaw as highlighted by a 26.5% HR/FB rate at home (remember that short porch). In 2015-2016, he sat 2-3 percent above league average for HR/FB rate in his first calendar year returning from Tommy John Surgery.  It can take a while to regain feel and command, so we need to see that above average through the lens of post surgery recovery.  Also, with the loss of command, it is fairly common to leave stuff hanging, especially when you’re having to adjust to new movement in addition to the adjustment from altering pitch usage.

With that being said, there’s no denying the 7.8% he posted in Pittsburgh is significantly low; however, a 10% change in ballpark factor, a switch to the NL, and a return to full health (or comfort and control of pitches) seem to have culminated in a HR/FB rate that shouldn’t seem too far-fetched. After all, his numbers in the minors never indicated home runs would be an Achilles heel for him, and he has a track record of low HR/FB rates when healthy, even in the years he pitched for the Bronx Bombers.

Sure, a little regression or fluctuation could happen, but he could feasibly sustain an 8-10% HR/FB rate if his command persists.

Attacking the zone

A by-product of the homer problem being alleviated was that it gave Nova confidence to attack the zone in his time with Pittsburgh.

“It helps a lot,” Nova said on changing ballparks. “Not every fly ball here is a home run. In New York? Pfft. Peace. So that gives you a little more confidence. You can go out and attack the hitters. There are some places where the outfield can make plays.”

So Nova hammered the zone with his Pitchf/x zone percent registering over half of his pitches in the zone, and contrary to popular belief, it’s actually not the first time he’s attacked the zone heavily. When he first entered the league, Nova regularly did the same thing, shying away from the approach the longer he was in the league.

One of the major differences this time around, though, is that Nova appears much more adept at using his arsenal to fool hitters since they are chasing outside pitches at all time highs. He used to have to settle for choosing between hitters chasing because of unpredictability or settling for strikes at the risk of being predictable.

The other major difference is that he’s cut down on the walks; you’ve probably heard that he walked just 3 batters in 11 starts for the Pirates.  While the gut says he can’t keep up that kind of pace, we are already three Nova starts into the season, and he hasn’t walked a single batter.  He’s locked in when it comes to getting ahead in the count and staying ahead, giving him a distinct advantage over the hitter and an opportunity to pull out the curveball.

In addition to all of that, Nova gives a great deal of credit to Francisco Cervelli for his role in helping him attack hitters and maintain confidence.

“It’s made it more easy for me because if I don’t have my best stuff that day or my mechanics aren’t right that day, instead of getting frustrated, I know that Cervelli is going to help me out because he knows exactly every little thing with me,” Nova said. “I don’t have to focus a lot and be a mechanic and be perfect. I just pitch my game and if he sees something, he’ll let me know. That was a key factor in me coming back here”

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I suppose it is not that baffling that no other teams ponied up to pay Nova’s asking price when you consider the ERA and strikeout numbers, but there’s no reason he should be in a Pirates jersey. There are simply too many reasons for optimism moving forward in the aforementioned underlying numbers that Pittsburgh should have been priced out of resigning him.

While he’ll have his rough days here and there — perhaps at Great American Ballpark — as long he stays healthy, the Pirates have much to be hopeful for when it comes to the rotation and the role Nova will play in it. His next trip to the mound is this Sunday at home against the Yankees, looking to continue to prove doubters wrong as he takes on his former club.

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