The SSG Landers of the Korea Baseball Organization announced they’ve signed longtime big league starter Iván Nova (h/t to Jeeho Yoo of Yonhap News). It’s a $900K guarantee that could top out at $1MM, the maximum allowed for a first-year foreign born player, if Nova reaches all the deal’s incentives.
It’ll be the first playing experience outside of North America for Nova, who turns 35 years old next month. The righty signed with the Yankees as an amateur free agent coming out of the Dominican Republic back in 2004. He made his big league debut with New York in 2010 and spent the next five seasons as a member of the rotation. Nova posted an ERA below 4.00 in both 2011 and 2013, although he generally offered average production on a rate basis while soaking up innings at the back of the rotation.
The Yankees traded Nova to the Pirates at the 2016 deadline, and he spent the next two and a half seasons offering similarly decent bulk frames in Pittsburgh. Nova tossed 187 innings of 4.72 ERA ball in 2019, although that’s the last extended action he’s logged in the majors. He made just four starts with the Tigers in 2020 and didn’t pitch in affiliated ball this year. While Nova signed a minor league contract with the Rockies in April, he was released a few weeks later without seeing any game action.
Nova would surely have been limited to minor league contracts had he sought out opportunities in affiliated ball this winter. Instead, he’ll lock in some guaranteed money and presumably get a rotation job with the Landers. It’s not of the question Nova could attract MLB interest next offseason if he performs well in South Korea.
Hope he can turn it around there!
Is the KBO restriction really on “foreign born” players?
Suppose a Korean couple is in the US for college or something and has a baby — does that restrict the kid’s future ability to play in the KBO?
Similar issue in the other direction if Americans have a kid while in Korea, for example if the father is in the military.
It would not surprise me if the category for restriction was actually something like “non-citizens”.
All non Koreans are considered foreigner born players if I recall correctly. For your examples given the child born in America would still have Korean national citizenship and not count as a foreign player. And the American child born in Korea would still be considered an American citizen and count for the foreign born player limit.
He was still serviceable up through 2019, perhaps even more so considering he led the league in starts and pitched close to 190 innings. He’d be 36 in 2023, so not sure there will be a return engagement, but you never know.
Was always a decent pitcher in mlb. Prob be a star there lol.
He helped continue Avila’s legacy of signing FA pitchers to spend time on the Tigers IL. Expecting Nova to do the same overseas. Rehab and collect a paycheck.
Ivan was an innings eater with the Pirates and Yankees.In other words,he was decent enough to be a fairly good fifth starter,and someone who was paid to pitch and pitched.He was one of Ray Searage’s successes,and pitched very well for the Pirates when he first came over.NH was smart enough to be able to get rid of him his last year,sending him to the Tigers,as he knew that as an innings eater he was not worth $9M a year.I wish him well in Korea,and remember him as someone who earned his money here.In this day,innings eaters are a valuable commodity with all of the injuries that occur to pitchers.
Ray Searage made a lot of pitchers look good.
If Ray did make other pitchers look good, why doesn’t he have a job? Or better yet, why did the pitching staff struggle under his last year of leadership? I am not saying Ray Searage was the worst pitching coach in the history of the Pirates. But his pitch to contact was not working when the league adjusted to more of a up-swing. The pitch to contact then became a failure and Searage wasn’t about to adjust his pitch coaching style. I feel he was probably against the computer style metric of todays game. That would be hard for an “old school” type of coach. I am surprised Dusty Baker has done well in Houston to be honest. I figured Dusty and Tony LaRussa would struggle with todays game. I hear people bringing up Ron Washington for managerial duties again and not so sure that is the wisest of plans. Ron is very old school coach and probably still on the flip Nokia cellular phone.
Fan-Because those jobs are going to much younger coaches now,ones who are more in tune with analytics.
Ray was fine for reinvigorating older pitchers who had had success with other teams.He may still be.He did not seem to do as well with the younger pitchers.That is a curse with small market teams who need to be able to develop cheap players through their farm system,
His record with pitchers such as AJ Burnett,Jay Happ,Ivan Nova,Edison Volquez,and Francisco Liriano speaks for itself.
And if you think that analytics absolutely controls the sport alone,talk to Mr Klentak,the now ex GM with the Phillies.