Lars Nootbaar is Making the Finishing Touches

I like hitters who have great plate discipline. I’ve always been drawn to the artists who seemingly have superhuman discipline and discernment. That might bring to mind superstars like Juan Soto and Mike Trout, but others with this skillset fly more under the radar, like Dansby Swanson and George Springer. With the relentless velocity and lab-grown secondaries being so prevalent, it’s incredibly hard to hit in today’s MLB, which makes it all the more impressive when a hitter can consistently split the hairs between ball, strike, and pitches to take and pitches to hit.

The Cardinals’ Lars Nootbaar has been one of those hitters. He’s got a 13.6% walk rate since 2021, tied with Bryce Harper for the 8th-highest walk rate among the 305 hitters who have taken at least 1,000 plate appearances in that span. Of course, walk rate is only a crude proxy for hitter decision-making. Nootbaar’s propensity to earn a free base is backed up by our hitter ability leaderboards, which annually have him near the top in decision value.

Over that same time, Nootbaar has used his discernment and on-base ability to produce a .250/.352/.431 triple-slash line and a .341 wOBA mark that quietly puts him in the company of some of the game’s biggest names: Christian Yelich, Francisco Lindor, Alex Bregman, and Julio Rodríguez.

Nootbaar doesn’t get the same kind of fanfare as that heady company, and there’s been a lingering belief that he might have more in the tank. In the (very) early going in 2025, there are indications that Nootbaar has closed some of his remaining gaps and might be putting the finishing touches on his profile as a complete hitter.

Off the Ground

Nootbaar has consistently hit the ball hard since he debuted in the majors in 2021. He’s posted above-average exit velocities each season and averaged just under 91 mph for his career. His 43.6% hard-hit rate is 7 points better than the MLB average, and he posted a new career high in that metric with 49.5% last season.

The issue, though, is that Nootbaar has too often made that high-quality contact into the ground — he’s run a 49% ground ball rate for his career, about 4.5 points more than the league’s 44.4% average.

Moreover, that’s been increasing. His average launch angle as a rookie in 2021 was 12.1°, but that’s fallen year over year until it was 6.0° last season. Naturally, he hit 51.6% of his balls in play on the ground last season.

For the past four seasons, Nootbaar has been one of baseball’s most productive low-launch angle hitters, as you can see in the scatter plot below:

Scatterplot of wOBA and Average Launch Angle, 2021-2024, from Baseball Savant

Only a handful of hitters in the league have been more productive while hitting the ball on the ground this much, and it’s a who’s who list of hitters we wish would get the ball in the air more often: Christian Yelich, Michael Harris II, Yandy Díaz, Elly De La Cruz, and William Contreras.

Out in Front

That Nootbaar has hit the ball on the ground too often is not some major revelation. It’s not news to him — he discussed his desire to hit the ball in the air more often with FanGraphs’ David Laurila in a piece titled “Lars Nootbaar Wants to Hit More Balls in the Air” early in the 2023 season. If it were that easy to do, everyone would do it successfully.

In that piece are a couple of revealing quotes. Here’s the exchange between Nootbaar and Laurila:

Laurila: How did you first learn to hit?
Nootbaar: “I remember my mom would always say ‘level swing.’ My dad was kind of the same; he would say, ‘level swing.’ So yeah, unfortunately… I mean, not unfortunately, but I’ve kind of always had a flat swing. Now I’m getting into the habit of trying to get out of that.”

Laurila: Circling back to your swing plane, is creating more loft something you’ve talked to your coaches about?
Nootbaar: “Yes. We’ve talked about it, how there would be more value in doing that, for sure.”
Laurila: How hard is it to make that adjustment?
Nootbaar: “It’s pretty tough. I’ve taken a lot of swings with my flatter swing, so trying to create more loft is a challenge. It takes a lot of work in the cage. One thing is simply catching the ball out front more, but I kind of grew up letting it travel. Hitting the ball deep is a natural tendency for me. Putting more balls in the air pull side would be of value, but I think the first step would be just getting more in the air.”

Nootbaar mentions that swinging to hit the ball in the air runs contrary to how he’s swung the bat his whole life. But that’s one of the commonly misunderstood aspects of the “launch angle revolution.” It’s not typically about changing the swing to an uppercut to elevate the ball. It’s usually about making contact with the pitch further out in front, where the bat is moving fastest and already has a natural upward direction.

So far in 2025, Nootbaar has been hitting the ball in the air like never before:

Sure, he’s only put 35 balls in play thus far. It’s April. But he’s already hit 25 in the air and only 10 on the ground. The seeds of an important adjustment might be present here.

We can see that clearly thanks to Statcast’s new batting stance and intercept point data, which reveal Nootbaar has made some subtle stance tweaks and has been hitting the ball several inches further out front in the early going in 2025:

Lars Nootbaar Stance and Intercept Comparison 2024 and 2025, from Baseball Savant

In particular, he’s closed his stance and moved up in the box ever so slightly. Those might just be the typical variation that happens over time, or they might be intentional, but the net result in either case has been that he’s been hitting the ball more than 4 inches further out in front than he previously has.

Swing it Fast

Nootbaar has long been a modern developmental darling. As a former 8th-round draft choice who profiled as a contact and on-base heavy prospect, a la Steven Kwan, Nootbaar has been working to increase his swing speed for years.

The past two seasons, he’s been a little better than the league average in that category, with about a quarter of his swings falling into the “fast swing” category (i.e., 75 mph or better).

So far in 2025, he’s swinging the bat about a mile per hour faster than last season, and more than 40% of his swings have been fast.

Lars Nootbaar Swing Speed Metrics from Baseball Savant

His average swing speed this season is in the 80th percentile across the league. Moreover, there is a ton of signal in swing speed, and it becomes trustworthy in very small samples, as Tom Tango illustrated last year. Nootbaar has already taken 78 competitive swings this season, which is more than enough for us to have confidence that he’s made a real gain here.

Of course, the impact of a faster swing is often a greater exit velocity. And more exit velocity, when hit in the air, often leads to more batted ball distance, which can mean more extra base hits. Faster swings tend to come with more whiffs than slower swings, but the higher quality of contact is usually worth the trade.

In Nootbaar’s case, it doesn’t appear he’s given up much of his contact while adding this bat speed. His whiff rate last season was 19.0%. So far this year, it’s at 20.0%. And his average exit velocity is a career-best 92.8 mph.

A Completed Piece?

Here, we’ve got a player with an excellent plate discipline foundation that lets him draw walks at a near league-leading level and carry a better-than-average strikeout rate. He is perhaps making the adjustments he needs to unlock more power. What more can we ask for?

Well, two things.

For one, health. Nootbaar has been limited by injuries throughout his career. To illustrate: Nootbaar’s 1,414 plate appearances since the start of 2021 are just a couple of handfuls more than Byron Buxton’s 1,401.

For two, more swing aggression.

While Nootbaar has consistently ranked towards the top of our hitter decision-making leaderboards, his decision value is carried disproportionately by his out-of-zone decision-making.

Nootbaar’s patience has approached passivity, and he has let hittable pitches pass by. It’s one (very good) thing to avoid chasing bad pitches, but quite another to aggressively go after the ones to drive.

With some of the other adjustments discussed earlier in this article in place, Nootbaar is in a position to maximize the damage he can do to them. He just needs to cut it loose a little more often. Even if that comes with a little more chase out of the zone, whiffs, and a few more strikeouts, it will be a trade well worth making.

(All data and graphics are through games played on April 8)

Photo courtesy of Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Aaron Polcare (@abeardoesart on Bluesky and X)