ST. LOUIS -- The 20th and final day of Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar’s rehab assignment came Wednesday, with the 28-year-old starting in left field for Triple-A Memphis in their day game against Louisville.
The game marked the latter half of Nootbaar’s prescribed back-to-back games in which he was due to play nine innings in the field.
The results in the box score were everything the Cardinals could want, with Nootbaar slugging a leadoff home run and going 2-for-5 with a walk.
After 20 days, his eligibility to remain on the rehab assignment has officially elapsed.
So, with no boxes left to check, will Nootbaar start in left field for the Cardinals on Friday night when they take on the Reds at Busch Stadium?
“I’m going to get with [director of medical services] Adam [Olsen] just to confirm something,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said before Wednesday's game against Texas. “But our hope was that if he was able to check that box, that would be the case.”
All indications are pointing toward a Friday return for Nootbaar, which could be a boon to a Cardinals lineup that, as of Wednesday afternoon, was still sitting with Tuesday’s 7-4 loss to the Rangers that featured a grating lack of execution against lefty reliever Jalen Beeks in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Beeks recorded back-to-back strikeouts and produced a harmless lineout to eliminate a go-ahead opportunity for the Cardinals, who began the sequence boasting runners on first and third with nobody out in a tie game.
The Cardinals’ 3-for-14 mark with runners in scoring position on Tuesday contributed to the club’s .222 batting average with RISP on the year. At the start of play across the league Wednesday, that mark was tied for last in MLB.
While a factually correct stat, it’s not one the Cardinals’ manager finds to be particularly sticky or predictive of future outcomes relative to the team’s general offensive identity and profile.
“Every team is going to have that conversation for a period of two weeks every year,” Marmol outlined Wednesday. “I don’t care if you’re the Yankees, the Dodgers -- at some point, the writers are going to come in and ask if you’d like a higher level of execution with runners in scoring position during a downturn. Like, every team’s going to field those questions throughout the course of the year. We’re doing that now.
“I’d like to pass that onto somebody else,” Marmol deadpanned.
Tuesday, the shortcomings against Beeks came from Nelson Velázquez and Masyn Winn swinging through high fastballs, chasing after those pitches well above the strike zone.
The sequence seemingly cut to the heart of Marmol’s position on the RISP conversation. Whether the ducks are on the pond or not, swinging at the wrong pitches will get you into trouble in this game.
Execution is execution.
“I don’t play the runners in scoring position game,” Marmol said. “I never have. I never ... every team will answer these same questions. You’re going to go through times where you don’t score as many runs as you’d like to and there’s opportunities out there that you don’t cash in. That’s baseball.”
Though Marmol rejects the premise of RISP as its own isolated problem to solve, he agrees that adding a healthy Nootbaar into the lineup should help the offense in general. With his return from double heel surgery looming, his skill set could provide a boost to the Cardinals in some areas in which they’re presently lacking consistency.
“It’s not just situational hitting, it’s like, the ability to move the baseball forward is real,” Marmol said. “Everything you’re talking about when it comes to situational hitting, a lot of it has to do with actually moving the baseball forward productively. So, the more guys you can add to a lineup that do that consistently, I think, the better off you’re going to be.”
Nootbaar is actually a fascinating case study for Marmol’s position on the RISP wars; his career batting average is .242.
His career batting average with runners in scoring position? .246.
“He takes his walks,” Marmol said. “He controls the strike zone. He puts it in play. So, that will be helpful.”