The St. Louis Cardinals’ decision to move Lars Nootbaar at the 2026 trade deadline is starting to look like the kind of deal that tilts in one direction fast.
Nootbaar had been a familiar name in trade chatter for a while. Last offseason, he was already being floated as a possible chip before surgery on both of his heels shut that conversation down.
Once he worked his way back early this season, the speculation came right back around. With Nootbaar headed for free agency after the 2027 season, St.
Louis found a deal and sent him to the Arizona Diamondbacks for right-handed pitcher Daniel Eagen, left-handed pitcher Sandro Santana and a player to be named later.
So far, the early returns are leaning heavily toward the Cardinals.
Eagen was Arizona’s No. 5 overall prospect when the trade went down, and he’s now the Cardinals’ No. 22 overall prospect. That drop says more about the strength of St.
Louis’ system than any concern about Eagen himself. The 23-year-old has settled in at Double-A Springfield and has been sharp from the jump, making four starts with a 3.38 ERA and a 31-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 24 innings.
He’s also posted a 0.792 WHIP in the Cardinals’ system, a strong contrast to the 1.305 WHIP he carried in Arizona this season before the move. In 20 starts for Double-A Amarillo, he logged a 4.95 ERA.
It’s still a small sample, of course. Four starts don’t make a full evaluation. But Eagen has looked like a real arm, and the Cardinals are clearly seeing the kind of pitching upside they wanted when they made the deal.
Nootbaar, meanwhile, has had a rough start in Arizona. In 17 games with the Diamondbacks, the veteran outfielder is hitting .170/.290/.264 with one home run and five RBIs.
St. Louis essentially swapped out a player with just one season of control left and a sub-.200 bat for a pitcher who could factor into the rotation down the line and Joshua Báez on the other side of the move.
That kind of transaction fits the way Chaim Bloom has operated. The Cardinals president of baseball operations has a reputation for building strong farm systems, and he’s doing it again in St.
Louis. Even with the club outperforming expectations in the first half, the bigger picture still points toward a team that is young and still climbing.
The Cardinals aren’t in position yet to go toe-to-toe with the Los Angeles Dodgers or even the Milwaukee Brewers. The thinking is that next year could be different.
This year, it wasn’t.
That’s why the deadline approach made sense. The Cardinals entered the season with development as the priority, and while their early success changed how people viewed them, it didn’t erase where they are in the rebuild. Adding to the system instead of forcing a premature push was the move.
And the system has become a real weapon. Baseball America ranks it second in the league, and pitching has been the biggest issue for St.
Louis over the last three years. Since last offseason, the Cardinals have stacked the farm with arms, including Eagen, Brandon Clarke, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Yhoiker Fajardo and Miller, among others.
Not every one of those names will become a major league contributor. That’s just the nature of it.
But the Cardinals have given themselves more shots, and that’s the point. Eagen may not be a headline name yet because he’s still at Double-A, but he’s already part of a system that looks deeper and more dangerous than it did not long ago.
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