From the city that once brought you “Good Ollie” and “Bad Ollie,” are we ready to move one borough north and present “Good Nova” and “Bad Nova”?
Granted, comparing Ivan Nova to Oliver Perez is a little like comparing heartburn to a heart attack. Yet their narratives overlap: high hopes, hints of excellence and a frustrating inability to fully harness their talent.
Bad Nova made his 2014 Yankee Stadium debut on Tuesday afternoon, as the Yankees suffered a 14-5 beating at the hands of the Orioles and dropped back to .500 at 4-4. In the wake of a shaky victory last week against the terrible Astros, Nova lasted just 3 ²/₃ innings while allowing seven runs and 10 hits, walking none and striking out three.
“I don’t feel good,” the prodigal right-hander said, before repeating: “I don’t feel good. You don’t pitch that way after the good spring training that I had.”
“I think [what’s] important, if he wants to get to the next level as a pitcher, is putting two halves together that are really good,” Joe Girardi said. “And I think that’s something he’s more than capable of doing.”
Nova has provided the Yankees with two quality seasons, 2011 and 2013, and his 2012 (5.02 ERA) partly derived from bad luck, although his good luck in the preceding and proceeding campaigns more than balance out his baseball karma. Yet as Girardi noted and we’ve all noticed, the final numbers serve as the by-product of roller-coaster rides. Nova tends to not have a bad start as much as a bad run, and he counters it with the reverse effect, providing value in the final calculation. The tastes of Good Nova have been so tantalizing, though, that the Yankees naturally want to see more of that guy.
Last year, for instance, Nova tallied a 6.48 ERA in his first four starts, and he wound up both on the disabled list (right triceps inflammation) and then at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barres. He returned to the majors as a virtual afterthought in a Yankees decline, and his 2.70 ERA in his final 17 games, including 16 starts, allowed the Yankees to stay mathematically alive until the final week of September. However, his skeptics would rightly point out a bad three-start stretch in September, when he put up a 7.07 ERA while facing rival Boston twice and the Orioles once.
A strong 2014 spring training, during which he struck out 21 and walked two in 19 ²/₃ innings over five starts, raised the bar once more. And now he has struggled out of the gate, with an 8.68 ERA, five walks and four strikeouts in 9 ¹/₃ innings.
“The first start, he only gave up two earned runs. Today, we couldn’t get in a groove,” catcher Brian McCann said. “We couldn’t get the fastball located down in the zone, and the curveball kind of feeds off that. He left some pitches up today.”
Nova caught a bad break when the game’s second batter, Delmon Young, hit what looked like a double-play grounder up the middle. Yet retiring legend Derek Jeter displayed his very limited range when he reached for the ball and couldn’t get to it, and before the Stadium’s fans even settled into their seats, the Orioles had themselves men on first and third with none out. You couldn’t feel particularly sorry for Nova since the Orioles blistered several other of his pitches, and he hurt his own cause when he misplayed a Ryan Flaherty bunt, failing to cover first base, into a second-inning single.
In all, it was a mess, as is Nova’s extremely young season.
“He’ll get it turned around,” McCann said. “The key to him is just staying down in the zone. I’m sure the next side [session], that’s what he’ll be working on.”
“I’ve just got to forget about what happened today and be ready for the next one,” Nova said.
The Yankees’ clearest plan for success features them getting superb starting pitching and riding their lineup newcomers McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carlos Beltran to cover up for the holes in their infield and bullpen. Very encouraging first starts from Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda fed the belief that such a strategy might be viable, and CC Sabathia at least improved from his first start to his second start.
A long run by Bad Nova muddies that plan. Next up for the 27-year-old comes the Red Sox on Sunday night. Can Nova steady this downswing and find a smoother peak? For the Yankees, it’s only one of the most important questions of their season.