Tell me again why we're hoping Ivan Nova will turn it around...

This is Nova, last year. The bad outings are bracketed in red.

As you can see, Nova closely adheres to Newton's Third Law - "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." - and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: "An isolated system's entropy never decreases."

He has pitched twice this season. The first outing was fine - no runs. Last night, he got lit up like the exploding star that he is named for.

I don't mean to harp on the guy. Maybe he can be out of the bullpen the pitcher that he could not be in the rotation. But nothing in his record suggests he will.

The Yankees sometimes display the tendency to fall in love with a player - or vice-versa - from the git-go. It's like seeing the beauty as you knew her in high school, even though it's 20 years and 75 pounds later. For some reason, they keep thinking that Nova will find some magical command that he has never been able to consistently maintain. And he might - with another organization.

Never did Bryan Mitchell's swollen big toe haunt me more than last night.