Last night may have been the best start of Ivan Nova's young career. He gave up only 1 run (0 earned) in 7.1 innings, while only walking 1 and giving up 2 hits. The part that was most impressive, was that he got 16 ground balls, with only 3 fly balls, because he was in complete control of his sinker, which had a lot of great late movement. Inducing that many ground balls is Chien Ming Wang like, while his fastball was like Josh Beckett's. Could he be similar to both?
Nova has a hard sinker, which can cause hitters to roll over on them, hitting the top of the ball into the ground instead of connecting with the sweet spot of the bat. He also has a swing and miss fastball. When he really reaches, and is in mid season form, he can hit 97 miles per hour on the radar gun. His velocity is already showing signs of improvement. Last night, he hit 94-95 miles per hour a few times. He had been throwing 91-93. Don't get me wrong, he isn't going to strike out twenty batters in a game, but he might strike out 6-8 and get plenty of batters to ground out.
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