10 Cardinals who can provide more value to the team in 2025 with one adjustment

Lars Nootbaar: Swinging the bat more often

Yes, we all know by now that Nootbaar needs to stay healthy. That's low-hanging fruit. But I wanted to talk about something in his profile that will dictate whether he'll be good or great as a hitter at the plate.

I have been one to praise Lars Nootbaar for displaying incredible patience at the plate while also being among the best in baseball at hitting the ball extremely hard. MLB Network shined more light onto that this offseason when they posted this graphic of Nootbaar being one of five players in MLB last year to be in the 90th percentile or higher in both hard-hit% and chase%.

And yet, what if I told you that Nootbaar's patience may actually hurt his ability to take the next step forward as a hitter?

Nate Schwartz of Pitcher List joined me on a recent episode of Dealin' the Cards to discuss this dilemma among a variety of other things that different Cardinals could improve on. (I highly recommend checking that episode out at this link or the embedded video below.)

Schwartz published a story on Pitcher List this past week following our episode, diving into Nootbaar's swing decisions at an even deeper level. He pointed out that while Nootbaar is a lot like Juan Soto in terms of his swing rate and chase rate, he watches 7.4% more pitches in the zone than Soto does, allowing pitchers to attack him more aggressively and, in turn, putting Nootbaar in more defensive counts.

Nootbaar has a well-below-average swing rate when the count is even or he is ahead in it, and yet, that's when he does the most damage. Those counts are the times to get the most aggressive. Nootbaar doesn't need to start swinging at everything; he just needs to be more aggressive when the count is in his favor.

This isn't just a theory that Schwartz had suggested (and he's not the only one to point this out either); this is something that has been proven to help Nootbaar at the plate. When Nootbaar is more aggressive, he actually does see better results. Nootbaar can become a true impact bat in this league by allowing his top-end exit velocities to do damage by swinging when the count is in his favor, and then being patient and using his eye to his advantage when he's behind.

David Adler of MLB.com found that Nootbaar was top 10 in all of baseball last year in "blast rate," meaning he had a high bat speed and squared up the baseball on the sweet spot of the bat more often than just about anyone. If that sounds like a bunch of word salad to you, the average slugging percentage on such swings last year was 1.184 SLG, so yeah, that's a good swing!

But Adler did find some numbers that give even more credence to the argument that Schwartz, I, and others are making. Although Nootbaar was tied with Shohei Ohtani in blast rate last year, Ohtani had 1,253 competitive swings last year to Nootbaar's 539. That is a difference of 67%! Some of that is due to Nootbaar missing games, but it also goes to show you that Nootbaar's passiveness does prevent him from tapping into the damage he can do.

Nootbaar's floor as a hitter will remain high because of his ability to manage the strike zone and do damage with the baseball, but if he wants to maximize his ceiling, he'll need to take the bat off his shoulders more in 2025.