Lars Nootbar intends to change things up with the Cardinals.
Lars Nootbaar responded immediately to a meeting with St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol, during which both player and coach expressed their frustrations with a disappointing season, by hitting a home run and a double in his first two at-bats against the Colorado Rockies on Thursday afternoon.
After struggling early in the season owing to rib and oblique issues, and feeling upset by his increasing ground-ball percentage and decreased power, Nootbaar aimed to address the essential changes for the offseason and the expectations the Cardinals have for him.
While it resembled a traditional end-of-season evaluation, it also served as an important venting session for a guy who the Cardinals believe has great power hitting potential.
“You work on certain things to achieve certain goals, and sometimes you’ve got to do something different if you want different results,” Nootbar told MLB.com in an interview.
Focusing on elevating the ball to avoid the rollover grounders that plagued him all season, Nootbaar hit a four-seam fastball from Kyle Freeland 384 feet for a home run in his first at-bat.
Lars Nootbaar’s new approach
Statcast reports that he hit the ball with an exit velocity of 105.7 mph, demonstrating his outstanding ability to generate triple-digit exit velocity.
“I believe the upcoming offseason will bring about significant changes.” It will not be a major swing overhaul or anything like that. A lot of it is about intent and adjusting some mechanical parameters. I’ll be conducting research and developing an offensive strategy,” he added.
Marmol was pleased with Nootbaar’s initial performance following their discussion about focusing on driving balls into gaps and clearing the outfield wall for increased attacking impact.
The Cardinals are concerned about Nootbaar’s growing ground-ball rate, which jumped from 46% in 2022 to 50.5% in 2023 and is presently at 52.5% this season. This pattern has hampered his power potential, resulting in just 11 home runs, 18 doubles, and two triples in 106 games this season.
Nootbaar was 2-for-5 with a solo home run, an RBI double, and a run in Thursday’s 10-8 loss to the Rockies.
The 27-year-old hit his 11th home run of the season, taking Freeland deep for a solo drive in the first inning. Since September, he’s gone 18-for-57 (.316) with three home runs, 13 RBIs, 10 runs scored, and 14 walks to go with his strikeouts.
A better 2025 season for Nootbaar and the Cardinals
Lars Nootbaar had bigger expectations for himself, which presumably means he’ll have a busy offseason implementing the swing improvements he and the Cardinals believe are essential.
A healthy 2025 season could help Nootbaar, who broke two ribs early in Spring Training after hitting with a wall while chasing a fly ball. After recovering from that injury, he pulled an oblique muscle in late May, which sidelined him for another six weeks.
“We’ve talked a lot about him being on the ground and early in counts doing more damage,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said.
“He is highly selective, but we need him to take his best swing early on. “He was able to open up the game that way today, which was encouraging,” he said.
