Diamondbacks Pay Dearly for Nootbaar, and Not a Moment Too Soon

Jeff Curry-Imagn Images Having somewhat unexpectedly found themselves in a playoff spot at the deadline, the Diamondbacks have acquired outfielder Lars Nootbaar from the Cardinals in exchange for minor league pitchers Daniel Eagen and Sandro Santana, along with a player to be named later. Cardinals Devil Magic has its tentacles in all sorts of places, but a key component of this witchcraft was an ability to conjure up certain types of players at will: innings-eating sinkerballers, pesky middle infielders, and corner guys who get called “professional hitters.” Nootbaar was one of the last great hitterish Cardinal discoveries before this three-year playoff drought (and counting) set in. His peak came in 2023, when he achieved cult hero status in Japan for his role in helping the country win the World Baseball Classic. During that regular season, he hit .261/.367/.418, good for a 118 wRC+ and 3.1 WAR in just 117 games. He even stole 11 bases and made 67 starts in center field, opening the door for a future in which he could offer more than just good vibes and a bunch of walks. That isn’t how things have worked out. Nootbaar has spent most of his career fighting off minor injuries: three IL trips in 2023, two in 2024, one in 2025. That last one was for a costochondral strain, which is not an injury I’d heard of before. Apparently it concerns the intersection of the ribs with the cartilage on either side of the sternum. This year, Nootbaar was out of action until June as he recovered from surgery on his heel. Over the past two years, he is hitting .234/.327/.360. He’s still drawing walks at an above-average clip, if not the poor man’s Joey Votto rate of 2022 and 2023. But his power has taken a dip. From 2021 to 2024, Nootbaar slugged .425 and posted a .180 ISO. Over the past two seasons, his ISO is down to .126. You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.) 7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only. 8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO. 9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members. 10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features! We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it. And after a hot (if delayed) start to his 2026 campaign, he has gone cold over the past five weeks. On June 30, Nootbaar was hitting .306/.400/.472. In 27 games since, he’s slashing .174/.276/.256. Sounds like bad news for the Diamondbacks, doesn’t it? Even the fact that Nootbaar is under team control for another year would be cold comfort if you knew you were getting a third straight year of slightly below-average offense from a corner outfielder. Might as well non-tender him. The reality is a little more encouraging. For starters, it bears repeating that Nootbaar’s plate discipline remains immaculate. Especially his chase rate; out of 340 hitters with at least 150 plate appearances this year, Nootbaar has the fourth-lowest O-Swing%, at 18.0%. That’s pristine. You could eat off that chase rate. And when Nootbaar does make contact, he’s actually hitting the ball as hard as he ever has. His EV90 and HardHit% are both career highs, and while he is only slugging .354, his xSLG is .423. That’s not all luck; he pulls too many hard grounders, and his in-air pull rate is under 10%. (That’s among the bottom 20 hitters in the league.) But the BABIP gods have been unkind to Nootbaar this year, and that should even out eventually. He has always had a big platoon split, but as his power has declined, his numbers against lefties have gone from iffy to… I’ll just use the number: a 41 wRC+ against lefties this year. That’s both a blessing and a curse; it means the Diamondbacks can’t run Nootbaar out there every day. But he’s also still hitting righties just fine — .258/.354/.383, for a 108 wRC+ — even with all the batted-ball rigmarole. With switch-hitters Geraldo Perdomo and Ketel Marte in the top half of the lineup, alongside Corbin Carroll, the Diamondbacks aren’t exactly desperate for a lefty hitter with a clue. Nonetheless, Arizona could work Nootbaar into a de facto platoon with Tyler Locklear, for instance, and get the best out of both players. The other factor worth mentioning here is that the Diamondbacks have a very odd relationship between offensive production and position. All four of their up-the-middle starters (Gabriel Moreno, Perdomo, Marte, and Ryan Waldschmidt) are above-average hitters, but left field, first base, and DH have been a nightmare. You know, the three easiest positions to find someone who can hit. Arizona’s Production at the Gimme Positions Position BB% K% AVG OBP SLG wRC+ wRC+ Rank WAR WAR Rank 1B 5.5% 16.1% .221 .265 .335 62 30th -1.3 29th LF 8.3% 20.9% .239 .305 .363 83 26th 0.1 27th DH 7.9% 22.1% .221 .293 .323 71 28th -1.6 28th I mean, holy crap, guys, that’s awful. And blame it on injuries if you’d like, but Lourdes Gurriel Jr. had a 48 wRC+ when he went on the IL a couple weeks ago. Pavin Smith got DFA’d after hitting .141/.236/.192, which left Ildemaro Vargas and Tim Tawa with custody of first base. If you were wondering why Arizona’s first basemen were hitting like a backup shortstop… well, it’s because that’s who’s been playing first for the Diamondbacks this year. Max Kepler was not that good for the Phillies last year, when he tested positive for epitrenbolone and got hit with an 80-game suspension. Going off steroids has not improved Kepler’s performance. In other words, it would be great for the Diamondbacks, to say nothing of Nootbaar himself, if he returned to his 2023 form. But if he remains as he is, he’ll be a huge upgrade on what he’s replacing. I mean, he could bring an oboe to the plate and just draw walks and probably do better than what the Diamondbacks had before. Arizona has one of the weaker farm systems in baseball, especially at the top, and within that context the cost to acquire Nootbaar was considerable. Both Eagen (an under-slot third rounder out of Presbyterian College) and Santana (signed for $15,000) represent scouting and development triumphs for the Diamondbacks. The 6-foot-4 Eagen is an over-the-top, high-release guy whose fastball, curveball, and slider all have way more vertical movement than horizontal. I’ve described guys like this in the past as “pitching in an elevator shaft.” Eagen struck out 34.1% of the batters he faced in High-A last year, and 132 punchouts in 97 2/3 innings as a starter will tickle the imagination at any level. His Double-A numbers across 2025 and 2026 aren’t quite as eye-catching, as a combination of fastball command issues and an unfriendly ballpark have led to (winces) 18 home runs in just 87 1/3 innings this year. I tell you what, a 4.95 ERA doesn’t look half bad in the context of 1.85 HR/9. All things considered, Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski have Eagen as a 45-FV prospect. If his command develops as he ascends through the high minors, there’s a starter in here. Santana, an over-age amateur signing out of the Dominican Republic, is as unlike Eagen as you’ll get. Now 21 years old and getting his first taste of Double-A, Santana is a low-arm slot lefty whose funky fastball release and two-plane slider have given opponents fits as he’s climbed the ladder. There is no question of role here; Santana has made 52 appearances in just under two seasons in the full-season minor leagues. Every single one of them has come out of the bullpen. You ordinarily don’t want to give up on a pitcher’s future as a starter four levels below the majors, but Santana has been terrific out of the bullpen. He struck out 37.4% of the batters he faced in High-A this year, and in 11 appearances since his promotion to Double-A, he has a 0.57 ERA and 21 strikeouts in 15 2/3 innings. He might be a relief-only prospect, but he gets guys out. That’s a pretty good return for St. Louis for a bat-first outfielder who hasn’t provided much bat in the past two seasons. But given how big a hole the Diamondbacks were working from, it’s worth paying. Even flawed help is hard to find these days.