Yankees don't need Nova to be a star

Perhaps the right question, as we try to dissect small samples of these 2011 Yankees, shouldn't be "What is Ivan Nova?"

Maybe try framing it this way: "What do the Yankees need Ivan Nova to be?"

If Nova's 2011 debut Monday night can serve as any sort of prototype, the answer is "competent." That bodes well for the pitcher and the club.

The Yankees defeated the Twins, 4-3, at Yankee Stadium, and if Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire hadn't experienced enough nightmares in the Bronx, his otherwise excellent team found yet another pinstriped foil in Nova, who picked up his second career victory.

"Yeah. I want to go longer," Nova said. "But if I get six innings and leave the game winning . . . Nothing is sure in life, but the team knows what we can do. We can win."

Six innings, three runs, six hits, a walk and three strikeouts? That's what Nova contributed Monday night. That'll do on most nights for these Yankees, who have hit 11 homers in four games and saw their bullpen triumvirate of Joba Chamberlain, Rafael Soriano and Mariano Rivera chip in with a shutout inning apiece.

Before the help from his friends in the bullpen, Nova produced an outing that looked like many of his starts last year. He excelled early -- holding the Twins hitless until there were two outs in the fourth -- struggled as he pitched to the lineup a second time and allowed all three of Minnesota's runs with two outs.

Yet he advanced that baseline, getting big outs to end his final three innings and earning further trust from Joe Girardi. He ended the Twins' two-run fourth by retiring Jason Kubel on a grounder to second. In the fifth, with the tying run on second base, he induced former MVP Joe Mauer to ground out to second. And in the sixth, he struck out future Hall of Famer Jim Thome to end his night.

Girardi had lefty Boone Logan warming up for Thome but let Nova go after it. "These are things that he's going to have to do for us," he said. "He's going to have to be able to get through these situations. It's all part of learning how to pitch at this level. He was throwing the ball good, and we stayed with it."

Not surprisingly, the jams emerged in Nova's second and third trips through the Twins' lineup. Last year, opponents seeing him for the first time of the game managed a lowly .286 on-base percentage and .268 slugging percentage, according to Baseball-Reference.com. The second time? .254 and .459. The third? .531 and .480.

That doesn't represent an issue unique to Nova. But the better pitchers will find ways to adjust to the hitters as the game proceeds. To counter the hitters' adjustments. If Nova didn't overcome that issue, he at least worked through it.

"He had tough situations, and he was getting out of it," Rivera said. "He wasn't able to do that last year. He'd hit a wall in around the fifth inning. Now he passed that. He looked great out there. I was really happy with what I saw out there."

"I wasn't thinking about what happened last year," Nova said. "It's a new year . . . I was just pitching my game the way I wanted to pitch."

With Phil Hughes a bona fide concern unless or until he gets his velocity back up, the Yankees need as much certainty as they can get from their other pitchers. Nova won't become a trusted member of the rotation until he contributes a season of quality starts like Monday night's.

If Nova still represents a question, however, maybe his teammates gave him a helpful answer: Just keep us in the game, kid. We'll take care of the rest.