Pitch breakdown from Nova's gem

Fair to say that Ivan Nova doesn't want to go back to the minor leagues?  With his back against the wall in a battle with Phil Hughes for the last rotation spot, Nova turned in the best start of his career.  Over 7 2/3 innings, he allowed 1 run on 6 hits.  Even more impressive is that he struck out 10 and walked not a single batter.  Some quick math tells me that's a 73 game score.

As he did in his two other superb 2011 starts (6/20 against Cincy, 7/30 against Baltimore), Nova relied on his new slider today.  He threw 25, which was the most of any start aside from the start against the Reds, in which he threw 26 sliders.  Pitch results for all of his four pitches are in the table below. 

	mph	vs LHB	vs RHB	Ball	Called	Whiff	Foul	In Play
Fastball	93.9	23	37	21	12	3	8	13
Slider	87.1	7	18	4	2	11	5	1
Curveball	81.0	8	4	5	3	0	1	2
Changeup	88.2	1	1	1	0	0	1	0
		39	60	31	17	14	15	16

For some more reference, I've included a color-coded chart of Nova's spin deflection (pitch movement) from tonight's game.  His slider gets unusual movement (it actually moves armside or "backs up"), and because of this, Gameday often labels it as a fastball, change, or cutter.  It really is looking like a typical cutter, since it has plenty of velocity and not a whole lot of break.  Nova calls it a slider, so I'll stick with that label for now.  

Remember that these are from the catcher's perspective and are in inches of movement relative to a theoretical spinless pitch.