Ivan Nova, a former member of the New York Yankees, will be headed to Chicago to join the White Sox, per recent reports.
According to Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic, pitcher Ivan Nova is being traded to the Chicago White Sox. Bruce Levine of 670 The Score confirmed the trade, adding that there are “no big names” headed to Pittsburgh in exchange for Nova. Robert Murray of the Athletic also confirmed the trade, while MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that the Pirates will receive a “young pitcher” and some undisclosed amount of international slot money. Per the above insiders, the deal is pending a physical.
Finally, Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports adds that it is likely to be the first of a couple trades that could go down Tuesday. The free agent market is, according to Passan, “frozen” at this moment.
Nova, 31, was once a quite productive member of the New York Yankees, spending parts of seven seasons in the Bronx before signing with the Pirates as a free agent. Since joining the Pirates, he has pitched to a respectable 3.99 ERA in 412.2 innings, striking out 297 and walking 74.
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Though he has only one year left on his contract at $9.2 million, he’s been trending downwards as of late. His 2018 season was decent, but certainly doesn’t warrant genuine celebration on the part of fans of the White Sox. It seems, as of now, that the White Sox gave up little in order to acquire him.
The move could still pay decent dividends for the Sox, though. As Devan Fink of SB Nation noted, Nova is projected by Fangraphs’ Steamer projections to be worth a serviceable 1.5 fWAR in 2019, which is just above the average fWAR yield for a player of his salary. While projections are seldom exactly accurate, they’re certainly useful to take into account. Nova, who was also the opening day starter for the Pirates in 2018, could, as Chuck Garfien of NBCS Chicago writes, serve as a mentor for the young White Sox pitching staff, seeing as he more or less filled that role in Pittsburgh.
Of course, it’ll be important to see who exactly the White Sox have given up in order to bring in Nova. International slot money, which appears to be a decently large portion of the return heading to Pittsburgh, could be valuable to a team looking to stockpile some international leverage.
Regardless, this trade is quite minor in magnitude for both teams involved, but it could still quite possibly serve as a tremendous and vital catalyst for the next week of trades and transactions in baseball’s complicated offseason landscape.