Once upon a time, there was a baseball player named Ivan Nova.
He pitched for a very famous baseball team called the New York Yankees, who played in a very famous stadium where it was very easy to hit home runs. As you might expect, Nova was scared to death of throwing the ball over the plate, for fear that it would end up over the fence, which it often did. As a result, he wasn't very good at his job. Then one day, Nova was traded to a slightly less famous baseball team called the Pittsburgh Pirates, who played in a slightly less famous but incredibly beautiful stadium where it wasn't so easy to hit home runs. Suddenly, he wasn't the least bit scared of throwing the ball over the plate. As a result, practically overnight, he became very good at his job.
If Nova's story reads like a fairy tale that's too good to be true, that's because it is. Baseball history is replete with pitchers who, over the course of their careers, have slowly but surely improved their command of the strike zone. It's the natural order of things, a byproduct of maturity and experience, not to mention the increased respect that umpires tend to give those with tenure. But almost nowhere in baseball history will you find a case like Nova's. Almost nowhere will you find a pitcher who, after seven major league seasons, just flat-out stopped walking people -- a starter who, nearly a decade into his career, went from having league-average control to an All-Star-worthy ace throwing more strikes than anyone in the game. For Nova, the difference is simple. In fact, it's as easy as P-N-C, one-two-three.
"I try to take the hitters out in three pitches or less," says the 30-year-old righty who now plays his home games in Pittsburgh's PNC Park. "I decide to attack the hitters, pitch to contact, and stop thinking too much."
Nova didn't always think too much. In 2011, his first full season in the majors, he went 16-4 and was good enough to get the nod in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Tigers (whom he beat). Despite pitching his home games in the cozy confines of Yankee Stadium -- where the right-field fence is just 314 feet away and where lefty hitters salivate over their at-bats -- the right-hander allowed just 13 home runs in 165 innings. The following year, he got in his head. Actually, Matt Wieters and too many taters got in his head.
On May 2, 2012, during a home start against the Orioles, Nova threw a 2-0 changeup to Wieters that landed 375 feet away in the right-field seats. It was the second time in a month that Baltimore's switch-hitting catcher had gone deep on a Nova changeup. Later in the same game, left-handed hitting Nick Markakis went yard on another changeup from the Yankees starter, depositing it 407 feet away beyond the wall in right. "I lost a lot of confidence in my changeup, so I stopped throwing it," says Nova, who went from using his cambio a career-high 11 percent of the time during his first year in the majors to just 3 percent during the 2012 season. Truth is, it wasn't what Nova was throwing that mattered so much as where he was throwing it.
"You gotta be really careful how you pitch," says Nova of the mental baggage that comes with working at Yankee Stadium. "That's when you start getting in trouble. You pitch around guys and you walk people. Then you force yourself to go right in the middle of the plate and give up homers."
Which is exactly what happened. In 2012, despite working just five more innings than the year before, Nova served up more than twice as many gopher balls (28 in 170 IP). The trend continued over the next few years, as did Nova's propensity for walking more batters than he needed to.
From 2010, when he first debuted with Yankees, through 2016, when he was shipped to the Pirates right before the trade deadline, Nova averaged 2.9 walks per nine innings. Not horrible, but not great. Over that same time span, major league starters as a whole issued 2.9 walks per nine innings. In other words, when it came to control, Nova was perfectly average. In related news, his performance was pretty average too. He had his moments, such as in 2011, when he finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year voting. Or in 2013, when his 3.10 ERA would have ranked among the league leaders if he had thrown a few more innings. In between the peaks, there were plenty of valleys.
In 2012, Nova posted an ERA north of 5.00 and was banished to the bullpen during the postseason. In 2014, he struggled early before undergoing Tommy John surgery. After returning in 2015, he wasn't much better, and on Aug. 1, 2016, New York cut ties with him, unceremoniously exporting the 6-foot-5 hurler to Pittsburgh just before the trade deadline. It wasn't one of those blockbuster deals, either: The Yanks got a pair of players to be named later in return. Just like that, Nova's time in the Bronx was done.
That's when it happened. That's when the switch flipped.
On Aug. 6 against Cincinnati, making his first start for the Pirates, Nova was an economical masterpiece, throwing just 76 pitches in seven innings and walking nobody. His next time out against the Dodgers, he once again walked nobody. After a third walk-less effort against the Giants, he spun a 96-pitch, complete-game gem against Houston in which he issued his first free pass since coming to the National League. Overall, in 11 outings with the Pirates last season, Nova walked a grand total of three batters. Proving that it wasn't just a fluke, he started this year by allowing just one base on balls in his first six starts combined. If you're scoring at home, in his first 17 starts with Pittsburgh -- a span of 106⅔ innings -- Nova allowed just four walks.
Four walks. In over 100 innings.
Since then, the righty has been slightly more human, issuing 12 walks over his last 10 starts. Still, his transformation has been downright mind-boggling. Nova's current walk rate of 3.0 percent is second-best in the NL. Since joining the Pirates almost a year ago, he's walking fewer than one batter per nine innings -- 0.8, to be exact, a 72 percent reduction from when he was with the Yankees. All it took was a change of scenery.
"Fresh start," says Pirates second baseman Josh Harrison. "That's what I got from him coming over here. It was a breath of fresh air. You could just tell by his energy."
"New York can be a tough place to play," says first baseman John Jaso, who spent three years in the AL East, and who faced Nova once during that fateful 2012 season, walking three times on 12 pitches. Five years later, Jaso sees a completely different pitcher: "I feel like he likes it here. He's settled in."
Nova isn't the only one who's more at ease these days. Ask the guys who play behind him, and to a man, they'll tell you that their job has gotten a whole lot easier. Easy as P-N-C, one-two-three.
"It's an infielder's dream," says shortstop Jordy Mercer. "He works quick, throws lots of strikes. You know you gotta be on your toes because every batter can hit it to you. It makes the game go by pretty quick."
"It's incredible," says first baseman Josh Bell. "You're always expecting the ball. You're expecting plays quickly. You look up, and he's thrown 60 pitches and it's, like, the eighth inning. It's nuts. He gets quick outs. That's his mojo. When your ball moves as much as his does, you don't have to nibble."
It's a lesson that was lost on Nova while he was in pinstripes. The sinker that he throws today -- which has the third-most horizontal movement of any right-hander's sinker in baseball, according to FanGraphs -- is just as filthy as when he first started using it back in 2013. The velocity on his four-seam fastball is exactly equal to what it was when he won 16 games as a rookie. The curveball is the same, as is the changeup. The only thing that's different is Nova's mindset.
Instead of tiptoeing around opposing hitters, he's torpedoing them. Prior to getting dealt last year, Nova's strike percentage with the Yankees was 63.4 percent, which ranked 60th out of 93 qualified starters. After the trade, he threw 70.4 percent strikes, best in the bigs. This season, through June, he was using just 3.33 pitches per plate appearance, by far the fewest in the majors. In nearly a full year since joining the Bucs last summer, he's averaging 3.26 pitches per plate appearance, the kind of uber-efficient territory that hasn't been touched since Hall of Fame control freak Greg Maddux retired almost a decade ago. Even though Nova's strikeout numbers are laughably low in today's golden swing-and-miss era (5.0 K/9), it doesn't concern Nova one bit.
"He's not looking for a strikeout," says Mercer. "He wants guys to hit it. He realizes that if he can get movement on the ball and keep it on the ground, he could throw a complete game every time out."
While that may be hyperbole, Nova -- who has used his savage sinker to induce 14 double plays this season, second-best in the National League -- has already tossed a pair of complete games this season, tied with Max Scherzer for most in the National League. The first of those came in April against St. Louis, when Nova needed just 78 pitches to go the distance. He's worked 108 innings this year, which is sixth-most in the NL; the two leaders, Clayton Kershaw and Scherzer, have combined to win three of the last four Cy Young awards.
Despite all the good company that Nova is keeping, perhaps the surest sign of his metamorphosis is that the changeup -- the pitch that Wieters spooked right out of him five years ago -- is back. In fact, Nova is throwing it 8 percent of the time this year, his highest rate since 2010, and more than three times as much as he used it last season with the Yankees. He still gives up home runs with it, such as the one Chris Davis blasted at Camden Yards in early June. A 375-foot shot to right field, it was practically a carbon copy of the bomb that Wieters hit way back when. Same pitch. Same direction. Same distance. Not that it bothered Nova. And the other two jacks the O's hit that day didn't bother him, either.
"If I give up a homer, I give up a homer," says Nova one day after the three-jack game against Baltimore. Standing at his locker in the visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards, his words come out slowly and quietly. His body is still, and he smiles as he speaks. He looks and sounds like a man at peace. "I don't worry about anything. I just pitch my game."
Asked what it's like to be in such a good place, he takes a deep breath, thinks for a moment, and then exhales.
"I feel free."