Cardinal Catalyst

The Cardinals have an on-base MACHINE leading their offensive push.

The St. Louis Cardinals have started the 2025 season 4-2 and are off and running! One of the primary reasons for their hot start has been their offense producing at a top 5 rate in baseball. The team has benefitted from a full team approach and the player driving the bus on that has been leadoff hitter Lars Nootbaar. Reaching base 17 times in the first six games of the season is a new franchise record!

So, what has Nootbaar done so far that’s so impressive? Lars has continued to be one of the absolute best at avoiding chasing pitches out of the zone and he has combined that with a little more aggressiveness on pitches he can do damage on.

Last season Nootbaar ranked in the 100th percentile in terms of Chase% at just a miniscule 16.9%. This season Noot has maintained a strong batter’s eye with a 23.3% that still puts him in the top 25% (30 PA sample still small but enough to evaluate an early trend).

The above graph courtesy of baseball savant on MLB.com shows that Lars Nootbaar on average swings less than the average MLB hitter to the point he gets 5% MORE pitches in the heart of the plate to hit BECAUSE of his advanced discipline in the shadow and chase zones.

He has been credited with +5 “batting run value”: 3 runs as a result of his plate discipline and 2 runs as a result of his swing decisions and impact on the baseball. Speaking of his impact on the baseball:

This graph (provided by Statcast) is used to demonstrate impact with fast swing rate% which is defined by “one that reaches a swing speed of 75 MPH.” As you can also see Nootbaar has added +1.8 MPH on his average bat speed this season and is 30% above league average at producing a “fast swing.”

This graph also displays Squared up: “A swing’s squared-up rate tells us how much of the highest possible exit velocity available (based on the physics related to the swing speed and pitch speed) a batter was able to obtain – it is, at its simplest, how much exit velocity did you get as a share of how much exit velocity was possible based on your swing speed and the speed of the pitch.” On average Lars is 5% greater than league average at squaring up the baseball.

Lastly this graph shows “Blasts” which is when you combined a fast swing and square up a baseball. Lars is 8% above league average at producing blasts so far in 2025 at 21.6% compared to the 13.7 league average% respectively.

Lars Nootbaar is 10-24 AVG (.417) 4th in NL (.533) 3rd in NL (.667) 10th in NL with a (1.200) OPS which is good for 4th in the NL. Drawing 5 walks to only 3 strikeouts.

When you think about some of the most imposing offenses in the National League Shohei Ohtani (LAD) Kyle Schwarber (PHI) Fernando Tatis Jr (SD) Corbin Carroll (AZ) are all similar in that there is immediate and intense pressure on the opposition from the first pitch of the game and if Lars is able to keep up 80% of this pace that he’s put up and is able to stay healthy through the full season you can easily justify adding his name to that quartet of table setters that strike fear into opposing pitchers and cause headaches for oppositional game planners. Last thing….

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT

-Thanks for reading