Sep 19, 2025; St. Louis, Missouri, USA; St. Louis Cardinals left fielder Lars Nootbaar (21) hits a one run single against the Milwaukee Brewers during the first inning at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-Imagn Images | Jeff Curry-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
“New POBO Chaim Bloom had an active offseason and moved nearly every veteran on the St. Louis roster (Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras, Brendan Donovan, Sonny Gray, etc.),” Axisa wrote. “Only Nootbaar remains, possibly because he had double heel surgery early in the offseason. He has never fully launched and lived up to the terrific contact quality numbers (exit velocity, etc.), though Nootbaar is a very good and very valuable player, one who is under team control for two seasons.<\/p>\n
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“He can hit leadoff and play center field in a pinch, and you needn’t try hard to convince yourself there’s upside beyond the near .800 OPS he’s posted throughout his career. As with most players in this post, the question is not will Nootbaar get traded, but when. (That also applies to rental lefty reliever JoJo Romero. The Cardinals will move him soon enough.)\u00a0Early possible landing spots: Diamondbacks, Mets, Royals”<\/p>\n
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Nootbaar is coming off a double heel surgery, which makes him a bit of a risk to acquire for the Royals, but Kansas City could take the risk on an affordable deal.<\/p>\n
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For the Cardinals, it would be best to wait until Nootbaar is healthy and producing at the big-league level again before trading him away. This could result in the Cardinals landing more prospect capital for Nootbaar than they would if they traded him soon.<\/p>\n
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Either way, the Royals need another outfielder and Nootbaar could be the perfect addition. They added Isaac Collins in a trade with the Brewers. Adding Nootbaar, too, would bolster the outfield on a roster that has a loaded infield and loaded pitching staff.<\/p>\n
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\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.si.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Cardinals have made four massive trades this offseason to push their team toward the rebuild that they’ve been needing to commit to. These four trades, that sent Brendan Donovan, Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, and Willson Contreras to contending teams, pair well with the Cardinals decision to trade three relievers at the trade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2325159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2325158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Cardinals-Outfielder-at-Center-of-Intriguing-Royals-Trade-Speculation.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2325158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2325160,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2325158\/revisions\/2325160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2325159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2325158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2325158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2325158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}