Overvalued in 2012: Ivan Nova
I have learned rather quickly that criticizing a player will get you a lot more angry comments than praising a player someone thinks isn’t very good. So with trepidation, I unveil my first Overvalued in 2012 pitcher, Ivan Nova.
This one was rather easy. Let’s see what factors, regardless of everything else, will cause instant overvaluation: pitches for the Yankees, is a rookie and has a shiny 16-4 record. Many fans and fantasy owners will stop right there, dive no further, and claim that Nova is one of the best young pitchers in the game. We should know better of course.
First off, we could go straight to his xFIP and SIERA marks and compare that to his ERA, which stands at a solid 3.70, for a respectable 89 ERA-. Unfortunately, his xFIP and SIERA are much less impressive, finishing at 4.16 and 4.14, respectively, and resulting in an xFIP- of just 103. Interestingly, Nova’s skills were almost identical to last season, with the exception of a small improvement in BB%, yet his ERA dropped 0.80 runs, as he had small improvements in all three luck metrics.
Nova really is only good at doing one thing on the mound and that is inducing ground balls. But this is not the next Chien-Ming Wang. Wang was able to sustain pretty good success because he was an extreme ground ball pitcher at his peak, regularly posting a GB% in the upper 50% to lower 60% range, which was at or near the MLB lead. Although Nova’s GB% is pretty good around 52%, that is simply not good enough when you sport a weak K% and league average control.
Nova’s minor league track record does not give us much hope for much of an improvement in the K% and BB% and his SwStk% does not inspire much optimism. Though, his F-Strike% does suggest he may be able to bring that walk rate down a shade below 3.0.
It is unlikely Nova would go for very many auction dollars in mixed leagues as his lack of strikeouts are obvious and even the most novice of fantasy owners would notice this and factor it into his potential value accordingly. But in AL-Only leagues where many owners will be utilizing middle relievers, his pedestrian strikeout total does not hurt as badly. That means fantasy owners won’t automatically shy away and so all the factors I listed in my second paragraph above, plus the artificially low ERA, will likely lead to Nova disappointing owners in 2012 and earning a loss on their investment.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Most of the roto public is more sophisticated than to chase a guy with a pretty win total and not a lot under the hood. Sure, in very simple leagues, he’ll be overpriced. But the pubic is sharper than you think.
agreed. i don’t have the historical ADP data to back this up, but i don’t recall scott feldman being a high pick in 2010 after he won 17 in 2009.
hehe, you said pubic
I do agree with your opening graph, though. When you say anything critical about Player Z, you can expect many that own Player Z (or pull for his team) to act like you insulted their first born (maybe it won’t happen with Nova, but this sort of thing does happen often). It’s silly, people shouldn’t take so personally, but I completely understand what you are alluding to. I hope someday we, as a community, can get past all that and just discuss the players without so much sensitivity.
To be overvalued, a player must first be valued. He will go undrafted in my 12 team leagues.
This is a better point than any brought up in the article.
Wow, a 12 team league. How quaint.
Hard for a guy to have value in a league where only around 1/3 of the player pool is rostered.
Unless it’s AL-only, and if that’s the case, Nova will be drafted.
I agree with this. That said, I think that Nova might be a decent league-average-ish pickup, someone who could eat a lot of innings without imploding. But yeah, definitely a dangerous overvalue potential there, too.
Though to play devil’s advocate, he probably will be a decent source of W next year compared even to considerably better pitchers. Would you bet that Wandy Rodriguez wins more than him next year? Knowing that the Yankees are going to score a full run (or more) per game than the Astros? Not sure if I would. On the other hand, chasing wins is usually kind of a fool’s errand- there’s too much variance to bank on it.
In the past ten seasons, there have been 203 rookie seasons of more than 80 innings (arbitrary cutoff to exclude relievers and small samples). Of those, 29 had a GB% =/> 50%. They are:
IP SO/9 GB% xFIP
Felix Hernandez 84.1 8.22 67.1% 2.77
Chien-Ming Wang 111.2 3.63 64.1% 4.21
Brandon Webb 179.2 8.57 63.7% 3.10
Zach Day 139.0 4.27 59.5% 4.58
Aaron Cook 117.0 3.15 56.6% 5.06
Kason Gabbard 101.2 5.93 56.0% 4.77
Jaime Garcia 168.1 7.27 55.8% 3.61
Carlos Zambrano 93.0 7.65 55.6% 4.03
Aaron Laffey 143.0 4.28 54.9% 4.56
Francisco Liriano 120.1 10.47 54.6% 2.50
Rick Porcello 170.2 4.69 54.2% 4.27
Chris Volstad 82.1 5.68 54.1% 4.44
Clay Hensley 182.0 5.54 54.0% 4.44
Ricky Romero 178.0 7.13 54.0% 4.05
Kirk Saarloos 85.1 5.70 53.8% 3.90
John Lannan 216.2 5.28 53.6% 4.50
Paul Maholm 217.1 5.92 53.5% 4.51
Casey Janssen 91.1 4.14 52.9% 4.64
Ivan Nova 201.1 5.45 52.8% 4.16
Zach Britton 154.1 5.66 52.8% 4.12
Luke Hochevar 132.0 4.98 52.1% 4.64
Shawn Hill 143.0 5.73 52.0% 4.25
Mike Wood 102.0 5.03 51.6% 4.45
Hiroki Kuroda 183.1 5.69 51.3% 3.89
Brett Anderson 175.1 7.70 50.9% 3.56
Justin Germano 155.1 5.62 50.3% 4.46
Mike Leake 135.2 5.71 50.2% 4.18
Brad Bergesen 123.1 4.74 50.1% 4.36
Jair Jurrjens 219.0 6.25 49.6% 4.12
Just 21 of those 29 had a SO% > 5.0. The Wang comparison is just lazy. Sure, this list probably indicates that Nova is no more than a #3. But is that really a guy that will go undrafted in any league? It turns out that a 50% GB rate plus 5.0 SO% in a rookie season is not so easy. There are only 2, on average, who do it every year, and most of them are certainly draftable in roto.
If I’m the Yankees, given his stuff and ability to throw 200 innings in his rookie year, where he started a handful of games at AAA in the middle, in the toughest division in baseball, I’m more optimistic than intentionally provocative interweb writers.
Nova is most likely around league average from a strictly ‘new age’ statistical point of view, but he plays on the Yankees with all that run support, and average over 6 IP per start (as a rookie). There is no reason to expect any major regression in his peripherals, and with that run support he will most likely generate the W more often than other pitchers.
In H2H fantasy leagues, wins have significant value. He is by no means a stud, but some of you are crazy in saying that you wouldn’t even draft him in a 12-team.
If anything, Nova will probably be about as ‘rated’ as he was this year – people are turned off by the higher ERA/WHIP (fantasy-wise) and low K, but he is a great source of cheap wins and doesn’t get blown up often (only 2 starts out of 27 with 5+ ER allowed).
Hysterical because I was just thinking of him as a good value. I thought of him as almost exactly the same pitcher as Clay Buchholz but without the insane good luck and hype. Maybe it’s the people I know and play with but no one is really high on Nova but Buchholz…
Buchholz won’t have the same value next year as he had entering drafts this year. That back injury and lack of production is going to scare a lot of people off. I don’t think guys are going to go crazy drafting or bidding on him.
However, you still have to consider upside. I think a healthy Buchholz has a much higher ceiling than Nova. I wouldn’t overpay for him, but the talent level is higher.
Nova won’t be good value because his final 5X5 Roto numbers were much better than the rest of his indicators. If people draft him as a 3.70 ERA guy and based on 16 wins they will be disappointed.
Buchholz is probably a good name to bring up because they may actually go the same spot in drafts or for a similar dollar value and Buchholz probably has the better potential to put up big numbers if he is healthy although I’m a little disapointed in his K-rate in the early part of his career.
Wow. So, you’re telling me that a rookie, who lucks into an undeserved record, (of course, if you’re playing in a real league, you don’t give a **** about wins), and also plays for the most media-fellated team in the entire world…is going to be overvalued next year? Color me less than surprised. Actually, don’t color me at all.
Your “analysis” tells me nothing I didn’t already know in freakin’ July.
He’ll be a good value, becasue everyone reads the same sources, which will all declare him overvalued.
I was thinking something similar.
Overvalued and undervalued is determined by the players in the fantasy league. A league with Yankee fans, or a league that counts wins, will probably end up overvaluing Nova.
A league with with sabermetic types will end up undervaluing Nova because they’ll all be sure he’s going to take a step back.
Most talent evalutators weren’t sure he would make the majors. That includes the Yankee talent evaluators, who left him eligible for the Rule 5 draft several years back. The Padres took him and then returned him.
Nova continued to improve. He was upgraded to a potential MLBer, but probably no more than a bullpen arm. Then he was upgraded again to maybe a #5 starter, maybe even a #4 if things broke the right way. Now most of them have upgraded his ceiling to a mid-rotation, #3 type.
Nova will probably be a better than league-average pitcher and his value will depend on what statistics a specific league uses. If it’s strikeouts, the Nova’s not your man.