Players · N · LF · 2026 regular season

Lars Nootbaar

St. Louis Cardinals National League CentralLF

Age: 29
B/T: L/R
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 205 lb
Number: #21

Born: September 8, 1997 in El Segundo, CA, United States
MLB debut: June 22, 2021
Drafted: 2018, round 8
College: Southern California
High school: El Segundo
Salary, 2026: $5.35M

Compare with…vs Gleyber Torres vs J.P. Crawford vs Taylor Ward

dbWAR: 8.8
PA: 334
AVG: .239
OBP: .342
SLG: .379
wRC+: 108

Lars Nootbaar is a left fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. In 2026 he hit 8 home runs and knocked in 33 RBIs, notching 68 hits across 334 plate appearances in 90 games. His batting average was .239, 2.2% lower than the league average of .244. He reached base at a .342 clip and slugged .379, for an OPS of .721, level with the league mark of .719 — 6th of 19 on his team, and 195th of 465 among MLB batters with 100+ plate appearances. He averaged 91.6 mph off the bat, hit 49.8% of balls in play at 95 mph or better, barrelled 8.3% of them and made contact on 80.9% of his swings. Adjusted for his ballpark and league, his 108 wRC+ puts his offence 8% above average. That comes to 0.9 dbWAR — +1.4 runs with the bat, +0.7 for the ballpark, -0.5 on the bases, +0.4 on double plays, -3.4 for the position he plays, against replacement level. It includes no fielding: defensive runs are proprietary and are not estimated here, so the figure credits playing a demanding position but not playing it well.

League context

Percentile among qualified batters, 2026 regular season.

wRC+108

wOBA.323

ISO.140

BB%13.8%

WAR.9

How the WAR is built

Runs above replacement, 2026. These terms sum to +9.0 runs, divided by runs-per-win to give WAR. There is no fielding term.

BattingBallparkBaserunningDouble playsPositionReplacement

WAR by season

Batting Regular season

Standard and advanced, by season. Regular-season games only — postseason games are listed separately below.


2026	STL/AZ	90	334	68	8	33	2	46	70	.239	.342	.379	.140	.287	13.8%	21.0%	.323	+1.4	108	0.9
2025	STL	132	583	119	13	48	4	64	119	.234	.325	.361	.128	.279	11.0%	20.4%	.307	-3.8	97	1.0
2024	STL	106	405	85	12	45	7	52	79	.244	.342	.417	.172	.281	12.8%	19.5%	.334	+7.1	116	1.7
2023	STL	116	503	111	14	46	11	72	99	.261	.367	.418	.157	.307	14.3%	19.7%	.347	+11.1	115	2.7
2022	STL	103	347	66	14	40	4	51	71	.228	.340	.448	.221	.248	14.7%	20.5%	.345	+9.3	126	1.9
2021	STL	57	124	26	5	15	2	13	28	.239	.317	.422	.183	.273	10.5%	22.6%	.319	+0.2	107	0.5

Separate from the regular season

Postseason Postseason

Wild Card through World Series. These games are counted on their own: none of them are in the regular-season tables, career totals, league context, leaderboards or dbWAR on this page.

Postseason batting

Postseason Lars Nootbaar's postseason batting, by October and round. Not part of any regular-season figure on this page.
Season	Team	Round	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
2022 Post	STL	Wild Card	2	8	6	0	2	1	0	0	0	2	2	0	.333	.500	.500	1.000

Box-score and rate statistics only. wOBA, wRC+, FIP and dbWAR are measured against a full league season, and a postseason is a few teams playing each other for a month, so they are not computed for October.

Platoon splits

How he hits left- and right-handed pitching.

Season

Batting by the hand the pitcher throws with, 2026. Counted from play-by-play, so totals can differ from the box-score season line by a plate appearance or two.
Split	PA	AB	H	HR	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	K%
vs LHP	51	41	5	1	8	13	.122	.260	.195	.228	25.5%
vs RHP	283	244	63	7	38	57	.258	.357	.410	.341	20.1%

Spray chart

Where every ball he put in play landed, 2026.

Loading 217 batted balls…

Contact quality

How hard and at what angle he hits it, over 217 tracked batted balls in 2026. Percentiles are against qualified batters.

Barrel rate: 8.3%
Exit velocity: 91.6
Max exit velo: 112.8
Hard hit: 49.8%
Sweet spot: 35.8%
Launch angle: 8.6°

Barrel rate8.3%

Exit velocity91.6 mph

Hard hit rate49.8%

Contact rate80.9%

A barrel is a batted ball whose exit velocity and launch angle have historically produced at least a .500 average and 1.500 slugging — 98 mph within 26–30°, widening to 8–50° by 116 mph. Reconstructed from Statcast's published anchor points, which reproduces them exactly; the interior is within a degree. Sweet spot (8–32°) is an exact definition.

Hot and cold zones

Batting average by pitch location, 2026.

Below averageLeague averageAbove average

Batting average by location of the pitch that ended each plate appearance, catcher's view. The bordered square is the strike zone; the outer band is chase territory. Cells with fewer than 8 at-bats are left grey rather than shown as signal. League average on the same attribution is .243.

Situational hitting

How Lars Nootbaar hits by base state, outs, score and late-game pressure — each read against his own season line.

Split by

By who is on base when he comes up. The season line is repeated as the baseline.
Situation	PA	AB	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA
All situations	334	—	—	—	—	—	—	.239	.342	.379	.323
Bases empty	193	167	39	3	3	26	43	.234	.337	.347	.314
Runner on first	56	49	12	0	3	6	12	.245	.327	.306	.294
Runners on	141	118	29	5	30	20	27	.246	.350	.424	.336
RISP	85	69	17	5	27	14	15	.246	.365	.507	.365

Runners on includes runners in scoring position, which is the convention every reference uses. Counted from play-by-play, 2026.

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Similar players

Nearest 2026 seasons by discipline, contact, power and speed, on rate statistics rather than totals.

Michael BuschCHC

wRC+: 111
HR: 20
AVG: .242
WAR: 2.3

Very close

J.P. CrawfordSEA

wRC+: 101
HR: 14
AVG: .221
WAR: 1.9

Kyle KarrosCOL

wRC+: 109
HR: 13
AVG: .253
WAR: 2.6

Nick SogardBOS

wRC+: 105
HR: 5
AVG: .255
WAR: 1.1

How these are computed

wOBA uses linear weights measured from this season's own play-by-play rather than published constants, and wRC+ is park-adjusted against that same league. dbWAR is our own open implementation — not fWAR or bWAR — and the full derivation, including its simplifications, is on the methodology page.