Lars Nootbaar's injuries prove the Cardinals once again held onto a player too long

The final third of John Mozeliak's tenure as president of baseball operations for the St. Louis Cardinals is characterized by a variety of flaws. Foremost among those downfalls was an unwillingness to trade a player at his peak value.

This is a fine line for general managers and POBOs to walk; if a player's trade value is at an all-time high, there's a good chance he's providing plus value to your team. You don't want to get rid of a player who is a valuable contributor for your team. The flip side of this argument is that a player at peak trade value will only lose said value as he ages and gets closer to free agency and the dreaded age-30 bracket.

Mozeliak held onto players like Dylan Carlson, Tyler O'Neill, Jack Flaherty, Jordan Hicks, and Ryan Helsley for too long and received consolation players in return. Had he traded these players a year earlier, perhaps the Cardinals could have received valuable prospects in return.

The last three years of baseball in St. Louis has been lackluster to say the least. The Cardinals haven't made the playoffs since 2022, and the team's low ceiling has been evident for years now. With the fading of Nolan Arenado, the departure of Paul Goldschmidt, and ownership's desire to cut payroll, the Cardinals' competitive window has been closed for quite some time now.

This lack of competitive play over the last three years should have pushed John Mozeliak to trade whoever had any value. Instead, Mozeliak tried to balance a "retool" and a competitive roster, only pigeonholing the Cardinals into the worst spot in baseball to be: purgatory.

The Cardinals haven't been good enough to be serious postseason contenders for three years now, but they also haven't committed fully to bulking up the farm system via trades of veterans. Mo could have traded Paul Goldschmidt at the 2023 deadline and gotten a haul of prospects. Ryan Helsley could have been moved at the 2024 deadline since it was relatively clear that the Cardinals wouldn't be able to make a deep playoff run. JoJo Romero could have been traded this year for a decent package of prospects.

Instead, Mozeliak held onto the bulk of his players at peak trade value and got little to nothing in return. This has only prolonged the Cardinals' malaise that began three years ago.

There is one more player the Cardinals should have traded but didn't, and that lack of a transaction is coming back to bite them.

Lars Nootbaar's injury history and underperformance in 2025 prove that John Mozeliak and the St. Louis Cardinals should have traded him after the 2024 season.

Let me first make it clear that hindsight is always 20/20. It's difficult to look at a player at his peak and make a decision to trade him and move on. However, when a team is in a downward portion of their competitive arc, trading players at peak value should be easier.

From 2022-2024, Lars Nootbaar was a strong outfielder. He slashed .246/.351/.426 in that time span while averaging 3.4 bWAR on a 162-game pace. That's a solid starting outfielder on most teams throughout the majors.

Nootbaar's main downfall was his inability to stay healthy — his 503 plate appearances in 2023 were a career high for him. When he was healthy, Nootbaar was able to produce for the Cardinals. His underlying metrics were also reassuring, especially after the 2024 season.

His hard-contact rate, walk rate, and chase rate placed him in the same bucket as players like Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Shohei Ohtani. This isn't to say that he was as good as those players, but rather that he had similar approaches as those players without the eye-popping stats to go with it.

The Cardinals and Lars Nootbaar entered the 2025 season with hopes that he could remain healthy and capitalize on his strong underlying metrics. In a "transition year" highlighted by opportunity for young players, few players' names were as important as Nootbaar's was for the Cardinals.

Sadly, he was unable to fulfill his promise.

Lars finished with a slash line of .234/.325/.361 for an OPS of just .686. His walk rate fell dramatically to 11%, and he struck out 20.4% of the time. After a torrid April and March that saw him have an OPS of .839 and a 140 wRC+, Nootbaar was unable to post an OPS greater than .734 the rest of the year in any given month.

What's most bizarre is that Lars did prove that he could be healthy for a full season, playing in 135 games and logging 583 plate appearances. He just wasn't able to capitalize on his playing time and show that he could be a viable starting corner outfielder for the foreseeable future.

Nootbaar had a procedure to remove Haglund's deformities on his heel, a procedure that has a murky — and potentially lengthy — recovery period. This is another setback in a long string of injury-related obstacles that the 28-year-old outfielder has faced throughout his career.

We all knew entering the 2025 season that Lars Nootbaar was an injury-prone player, but there was hope that he could be healthy in 2025 and become the outfielder we've all wanted him to be. The health was there, but the production wasn't. Now, the Cardinals are once again experiencing what it feels like to hold onto a player for too long.

Nootbaar is a free agent after the 2027 season, so his team control window is shrinking relatively quickly. His poor 2025 output, paired with another major injury, essentially tanks Lars Nootbaar's trade value. Now, the Cardinals will have to either hold onto him and hope he regains that value or trade him at a low point.

It's a shame for Lars Nootbaar that he hasn't been able to prove health and production in the same year since 2023. The Cardinals waited too long to trade their international outfielder, and now they're feeling the repercussions of actions that have become commonplace for the organization as it enters a new era of leadership with Chaim Bloom.