Pittsburgh Pirates’ Ivan Nova’s First Pitch Success Fuels Rebirth

Pittsburgh Pirates SP Ivan Nova has been a revelation since coming over from the New York Yankees.

When the Pittsburgh Pirates traded two players to be named later – later named as Steven Tarpley and Tito Polo – for Yankees SP Ivan Nova, many, including your author, were underwhelmed.

In the span of five starts, Nova has turned many’s heads. Some even feel that general manager Neal Huntington should approach him about an extension to keep him in Pittsburgh.

How did this happen? How did Ray Searage and company turn Nova into this year’s J.A. Happ?

Improvement Across the Board

Many of Nova’s peripherals since coming to the Pittsburgh Pirates are worthy of salivation.

In compiling this data, I was gobsmacked by the difference in F-Strike percentage, or percentage of at-bats that start with a strike. Nova’s time as a Pirate sees a 68.4 percent rate, far above the current MLB-wide rate of 60.6.

Getting to an 0-1 count is obviously a desirable thing for every pitcher, and in Nova’s case many of his pitches are playing better with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Fix It In The Mix

One of the ways that Searage revitalized Happ in 2015 was his tinkering with Happ’s pitch usage.

With Nova, Searage is doing the same thing, but with an emphasis on what Nova offers to begin at-bats. Here is a look a the first-pitch usage percentages between Nova’s time in the Bronx and on the North Shore, along with strike percentages for those pitches.

These three pitches represent the bulk of first pitch offerings from Nova, though a changeup and slider are still seldomly used.

The most drastic change has been an eight percent drop in sinker usage on first pitch. However, there is also a two percent drop in four seam fastball usage is seen along with a modest three percent increase in curveballs. Accounting for small increases in change and slider, the re-distribution of that eight percent is not necessarily seen in his preferred three pitches, but the effectiveness of these three are drastically better.

And why is that?

No Trouble With the Curve

First, let’s tackle Nova’s curveball. Below you will see his first pitch curveball heat map while with New York on the left, with his Pittsburgh data on the right

Though his time with the Yankees gives us nearly two-thirds more pitches to work with, we can see that Nova’s first-pitch curveballs tend to land in the bottom third of the zone – in on left-handed batters and away from right-handers – at a much higher rate than they ever did in New York. While some of his curves do end up in meatier parts of the plate, overall its effectiveness can’t be questioned. Only twice has a first pitch curve been put into play. 18 of Nova’s 35 first pitch curves as a Pirate have been called strikes (51.4%). Add in five whiffs, and the curveball has shown to be an effective table-setter for Nova thus far.

Don’t Forget The Heat

We can’t ignore Nova’s four-seam fastball as a first pitch weapon.

Though thrown a bit less, the straight heat has more than doubled its previous effectiveness. With the caveat of a small sample size – Nova has thrown only 17 four-seamers on first pitch since joining the Pittsburgh Pirates – The fastball is showing to be more effective. With just 17 pitches to show, the heatmap will look awfully static, but we can compare Nova’s four seam first pitch tendencies to another Yankees starter to draw some conclusions.

If we compare Nova’s first pitch fastballs to Masahiro Tanaka‘s, they profile very similarly. Both like to work a similar region with the four-seam, though Nova does come back down in the zone more than Tanaka. Tanaka has thrown a similar number of first pitch fastballs, making for a good comparison.

Here is where it gets a little bit tricky to fully quantify. It is well known that the Pittsburgh Pirates preached keeping balls down in the zone as a means to induce more ground balls. Is it fair to wonder if the Yankees – or, for that matter, other teams – emphasize this as much as other teams? To be sure, keeping the ball down in the zone will benefit any pitcher on any team in any league. For Nova, it may be paramount.

It has only been five starts since Ivan Nova joined the Pittsburgh Pirates, but if he can continue to find success on first pitch, there is no reason to believe that this performance would not be sustainable.

Photo courtesy Pittsburgh Pirates