Yankees Daily

Full Name: Ivan Manuel Nova
Position: Pitcher
Born: 01/12/1987
Birthplace: San Cristobal, Dominican Republic
Height: 6′ 4″
Weight: 210
Bats: R
Throws: R

Background:

Nova was signed as an undrafted free agent by the New York Yankees on 7/15/04. In December 2008, the Yankees exposed him to the Rule five draft and he was selected by the San Diego Padres. However, he was returned to the Yankees at the end of the 2009 spring training. Following the 2009 season, Nova was added to the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft

Minor Leagues:

Nova’s minor league career has been up and down. At 19 years old, he got off to a great start in the Gulf Coast League in 2006. If you look a the stats above, you can see he had a great strike out to ball ratio. Scouts loved his plus size and demeanor on the mound.

In 2007, his body began to grow and that pleased the Yankee organization but he didn’t have the best year because he had arm trouble but the Yankees weren’t worried because they saw potential.

In 2008 he had an inconsistent season and the Yankees blamed him for not being aggressive enough when up in the count. His .353 BABIP was fairly high which could indicate that he was somewhat unlucky and could have benefited from better defense behind him.

In 2009 the Yankees exposed him in the Rule V Draft and the San Diego Padres drafted him. San Diego tried Nova out in the bullpen in Spring Training but he was not successful and did not make San Diego’s roster. He was then returned to the New York Yankee farm system.

When he returned to the Yankees’ farm system he started in double-A Trenton where he excelled. If you look at the stats above, you can see how successful he was but the most impressive statistic was his GO/AO ratio, which was 2.47. His strikeout rate was still not great but the increased ground ball rate combined with a more normal BABIP against (.290) allowed Nova to succeed at the AA level and get called up to Scranton/Wilkes Barre.

The best thing about his stop at Scranton was that all of his pitches were working. He did not fare well however because he wasn’t aggressive enough.

Awards/Honors:

05/26/2008 FSL Pitcher of the Week

Scouting Report:
Strengths:

Ivan Nova has always been considered to have the some of the best pure stuff in the pitching rich Yankees’ organization.

Nova has a low-90’s four-seam fastball that reaches 94 with good movement and he also throws a two-seam fastball that gets a lot of ground ball outs. He has great command of his sinker and it has great movement down in the zone and he gets on top of it due to his size.

He can maintain the velocity he has, even though not ideal, deep into games. He resembles Mariano Rivera when he throws because he has an easy smooth wind up that’s not violent and if you are a batter, it looks like he isn’t throwing hard. It will fool and sneak up on you.

He has a great curve ball and change up that both grade as plus pitches. He’ll use the change up to induce early count ground balls and use his curve ball when he needs to strike a batter out. His curve ball is his strike out pitch. His change up has good fade and he maintains solid arm action.

He’s cool and collected like Mariano Rivera on the mound and he won’t let a game get out of hand by losing his composure.

Weaknesses:

Criticism’s of Nova’s game is that he’s too even keel. He doesn’t go emotionally up and he doesn’t go emotionally down. He’s not aggressive enough. This works against him because he shows no passion when he has two strikes on a batter. Instead, he tries to pitch to contact when he “could” strike batters out because he has the stuff too.

He also fails to put away batters partly because he avoids pitching inside and he allows batters to live on the outside because they know an inside pitch is not coming.

His curve ball can be inconsistent and it flattens out from time to time.

Pitches:

Fastball, curve ball and change up.

The future:

The reason for Nova’s success to date is that he does a good job keeping the ball on the ground and that leads to his ability to limit the home run.

However, Nova is at his best when he’s pitching out of the strike zone with his magnetic stuff. He has every thing you want, two major league ready secondary pitches, strength, endurance and command but he lacks aggressiveness and killer instinct. His ceiling is probably of a back end of a rotation guy but if he could increase his strike out total and become more aggressive then his projection would be higher.

Ivan Nova is on the 40 man roster so expect him to have some starts in 2010 for the Yankees because there’s always a pitcher that gets hurt. He’ll start the season for the Triple-A club, Scranton-Wilkes Barre Yankees.

Ivan Nova Scouting Report:

Scouting Report
Control:	51
K-Rating:	33
Efficiency:	44
vsPower:	62

Ivan Nova Video:

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