3 Cardinals hot hitting performances to buy, 2 to sell a week into the 2025 season

The St. Louis Cardinals are on fire offensively to begin the 2025 season, with seemingly every player in their lineup producing at a high level during their first week of action.

This should be implied every time I write about performances this early in the year, but we are obviously discussing a very small sample size, so it would be unwise to draw a bunch of conclusions from this stretch of six games. But I do have some hitters that I think fans are safe to believe in based on both their early season performance and what past history has told us about those players, while there are a couple of names who have started off hot offensively that may not be able to keep it up.

Here are 3 Cardinals hitters whose hot starts to 2025 I am buying into and 2 that I am not ready to believe in yet.

Buy: Lars Nootbaar

I mean, come on, I've been one of the captains of the Lars Nootbaar hype train for quite some time, so you know I am buying into what I am seeing from the Cardinals' leadoff man so far.

When the Cardinals tasked Nootbaar with leading off games for them this year, they entrusted him to not only set the tone at the top of the lineup in the batter's box but also help light a fire underneath the rest of their lineup with the way he plays the game. So far, he's doing more than they could have even asked for or imagined from him.

Nootbaar is slashing .417/.533/.667 with two home runs, five runs batted in, and seven runs scored in his six starts so far, good for a 235 wRC+ and already accumulating 0.6 fWAR, tied for third in all of baseball. As per usual, Nootbaar's underlying metrics and Baseball Savant page are glowing with incredible results, but there are a few changes specifically that I believe are worth noting and can be a sign that the breakout I predicted he would have is truly happening.

First, Nootbaar is actually swinging the bat more often to begin 2025 than he has any other season. Nootbaar has been lauded for his ability to stay within the strike zone and not chase pitches, but that has also been paired with passivity at times, meaning he doesn't swing at enough pitches to do the kind of damage he is capable of.

In 2025, Nootbaar is swinging at 5.7% more pitchers outside of the strike zone and 2.6% more of the pitches thrown in the zone. He's been more selective earlier in counts, allowing him to get into hitters counts and go after pitches he likes, but he is swinging more often overall and making more contact with those pitches when he does swing. And while Nootbaar's chase rate has increased by 6.1% thus far, that's actually a good thing.

Nootbaar has always been one of the best hitters in baseball at hitting the ball hard and squaring it up when he does make contact; the problem was just not swinging often enough, and also missing a bit more often than you'd like to see. Now he's launching those balls left and right, and it's why you see such incredible batting average and slugging percentage numbers from him, all while still maintaining his ability to draw walks.

No, I do not believe Nootbaar is going to be a top 10 hitter in baseball this year like he's playing as right now, but I have believed for some time now that Nootbaar was bound to have a huge year, and I see an All-Star campaign in the cards for him this year. Nootbaar has shown the ability to be a 123 wRC+ hitter when he's on the field consistently, and I believe he could end up landing in the 130-140 wRC+ range in 2025 while playing well above-average defense in left field. That is a super valuable player and one that should even quiet down his loudest critics over the course of the season.