The Cardinals announced that outfielder Lars Nootbaar has been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to May 30, with a lower back contusion. His roster spot will go to fellow outfielder Jordan Walker, whose recall was reported yesterday.
Nootbaar, 25, goes to the IL for the second time this season. He landed on the shelf in early April due to a left thumb contusion. He returned in the middle of April but has sat out the past few days with back spasms, which allowed the club to backdate today’s IL stint. That means he could potentially return in a week but it will leave the club noticeably short-handed in center field in the meantime.
The Cards traded away Harrison Bader last year, seemingly confident in finding an internal replacement in center field from either Tyler O’Neill, Dylan Carlson or Nootbaar. All three of them had previous experience at the position and have been given some more time there this year, but now all three of them are on the injured list at the same time. O’Neill has been out close to a month due to a lower back strain and doesn’t seem to have made much progress in getting healthy again. Carlson has been out of action about two weeks due to an ankle injury and has yet to begin a rehab assignment.
The club is coming off unusual back-to-back off-days, meaning their most recent contest was on Tuesday. In that game, Tommy Edman went out to play center field and could perhaps continue in that role for the next week. After Tuesday’s game, he’s now up to 13 major league innings at the position. He was the club’s shortstop earlier in the year but Paul DeJong has since taken over while bouncing back from a few miserable seasons at the plate. Óscar Mercado is another option for center field work and is hitting .333/.357/.444 this year. But that’s in a small sample of 28 plate appearances and his career batting line is a far more modest .238/.291/.389.
Hopefully, the week off is enough for Nootbaar to return to action as he’s a strong all-around contributor. In 208 career games, he’s hit 23 home runs and walked in 14.2% of his plate appearances. His .241/.347/.427 batting line amounts to a wRC+ of 118. He’s also stolen 11 bases and has strong grades for his outfield defense.
Cardinals about to have the worst defensive outfield in baseball. That pitch to contact philosophy couldn’t have gone any worse for the cardinals this year. Gonna be giving up 10 plus runs every game now.
Well as a proud representative of the Greatest fans in baseball, consider this us being magnanimous and allowing some of your other less fortunate teams some time in the spotlight. You guys are doing well and we are proud of you. I know it is tough rooting for a team that isn’t as prestigious as our grand ball club. Don’t worry, we have a good farm that seems to pull good players from nowhere unexpectedly like Nootbaar, Edman, and Donovan. We’ll be back at the top soon!
Sir this is a wendys
I knew this was coming when they announced recalling Walker. I guess Edman remains our centerfielder.
Tommy is a stud defensively but he’s got a noodle arm him in center is a terrible idea. He needs to be at second base where he’s one of the best defensive players in baseball.
Tommy can handle it just fine for a week. Mercado is a solid back up option. Now the Walker recall makes sense. Get well soon Noot.
The saving grace for the Cardinals is their laughably weak division. It’s almost a joke that two months into the season, no team in the NL Central has a run diff better than +7. (That +7 team would be the Cardinals themselves.) With all of 4.5 games separating five clubs struggling to be mediocre, a hot couple weeks puts you in first place.
If anything, St. Louis seems to have the best talent in the NL Central collection of underachievers and overrateds. Nobody has played themselves out of contention including the much maligned Birds. Putting Edman in center would not be the end of the world, given the level of “competition” the Cardinals face.
Cards have by far the most talent in the division. Brewers record is a mirage; they have no offense and we really can’t count on half the team miraculously getting hot at the same time. By July you should be back over .500 and ready to move into 1st place, as long as Marmol keeps his mouth shut.
Yes, Kripes, it pains me to agree with your Brewers assessment. The improved offense we saw at start of this season has returned to its anemic true self of recent past seasons. Their off-season trades and free agent acquisitions have been overall pretty bad on offense (except Miller). I still expect Contreras, Wiemer and Turang to become good (albeit Contreras to a greater extent), but none have done much so far. Pitching is still good but not as good as before, so I’d be very surprised if Cardinals don’t eventually win division by comfortable margin.
The Brewers have been ravaged by injuries though. If they get a couple of months of good health, things might look different. They really haven’t been able to play any kind of match up strategy or give guys scheduled rest because of the constant shuffle to keep bodies on the field. I won’t underestimate them.
I really thought Winker would be better. I guess all that character stuff that came up in Seattle is true.
From Winker to wanker ao abruptly too.
I saw his career arc ascending a couple of years ago. Now it’s ass- ending.
Cardinals need to resign Scott hurst to play centerfield they are pound for pound the best team in baseball at developing unknown half Asian half white American players into great major league players. That’s one of the organizations best development fields.
Am I missing something about Lars Nutbar? Cards fans like the guy and I’ve read positive things about him and that’s good. I don’t follow the Cardinals so I haven’t seen him in game action. His numbers and everything about him seems around average at best. What am I missing here?
He walks a ton and he hits the ball hard, it just doesn’t always translate to hits. He should also not be in center, he just doesn’t look good out there. He was involved in two plays that got someone hurt, Edman once and himself.
The last play was clearly burlesons fault. This one wasn’t on anyone. He’s a solid centerfielder but a great right fielder
He has one of the best eyes in baseball, has a ton of untapped power potential, plays great defense, great baserunner and always hustles throughout the game. What’s not to love. Kid is a star.
Nothing. He is average at best. But in St. Louis average at best practically gets a street named after you and thousands of Jersey’s sold. He walks a ton because singles are bad for his OPS numbers. He tries very hard to not swing the bat unless it’s his ideal pitch. So on paper he carriers a high OPS when in reality there isn’t much impressive about his game. Not someone you want to rely on in critical situations, his slugging numbers all seem to come in the equivalent of the NFL’s junk time. But he’s got a unique name and very charismatic, which if you either have that or long hair, you are basically a god to Cardinal fans.
Here comes the cry baby. Bitter little reds fan, cubs fan, Mets fan? Guaranteed to be one of the laughing stock teams.
Sorry to disappoint you bud. Life long Cardinals fan, who holds the team accountable and actually watch’s the rest of the MLB and makes my own opinions rather than take what the front office and local media wants you to believe. Use to even have season tickets for more than decade but had to stop that after seeing the direction the team was headed after the Matheny hiring. It was tough watching the team in the 90s and they are headed back to that.
Marmol keeping his mouth shut would be a miracle, though. The guy just love to gift spicy quotes to the media.
Somebody tell Mozaliak I will sell him my crystal ball for $1,000. This team is a mess and this season going as is, was pretty easy to see coming. When you stock your team with a bunch of barely average joes and sell it as “organizational depth”, you end up with your opening day SS and second baseman as regulars in the outfield to start June. Presumably the outfield will be Donovan, Edman, Walker. So that’s 3 infielders as outfields. DeJong’s bat has come back to earth, so he’s no help. Team has to solely rely on Godschmidy, Arenado, Contreras and Gorman who are all streaky on there own. The team will still sell a roster primarily made up of barely league average players as a roster of extreme depth and versatility. But the reality still remains the team is made up of a bunch of overrated nobodies that every other team believes can beat them.
Nearly everyone picked the Cards to win the division, or at least contend but you, Average Joe Internet Guy, saw this coming all along. Neato!
This guys is a troll posts negative stuff on every cards article. Don’t give him attention.
In fairness, 678 has been saying this exact thing all year. I don’t agree exactly, but I will defend his position as being consistent. But Godschmidy? And Contreras is barely playable at this point. I’m surprised you defend him.
Hitting and D will be fine eventually. The pitching is still the big problem that will be their undoing.
Nooooooooot!!!!!
The team has no outfielders, so instead of calliing up Gomez so Gorman can DH and get Edman or Donovan back to 2B let’s continue to carry 3 catchers. Let’s run DeJong into the ground rather than let Edman give him a break so we can keep Yepez as a late inning Bench bat only. The roster management is absolutely baffling.
Not sure Gomez is much of an outfielder but would like to see his bat. Burleson needs to go back to AAA. Not sure what he has done to earn every day status. They have three center field options, all injured. Sounds like Carlson is not far off. His defense is the best we have so we need him back asap.
Plenty of time for the cards to get hot and win the division.