Ranking the St. Louis Cardinals who will benefit the most from new rule changes

#3 - Lars Nootbaar

During his second-half breakout in 2022, Lars Nootbaar became a force to be reckoned with at the plate, and teams began to shift more against him to account for his pull power.

According to Baseball Savant, Nootbaar had a significantly lower wOBA (.312) against the shift than when teams did not shift against him (.378). Looking at his heat maps of where his batted balls went, there is a hot spot right where the infield shift would be against players of Nootbaar's profile.

Ridding the shift positively impacts a guy like Nootbaar, who does pull the ball, but puts it in play enough for that to matter. Players that strike out a lot will not benefit as much, as they just don't have as many batted balls in play. In the case of Nootbaar, he should see an uptick in production from the shift ban alone.