Royals Emerging as Trade Fit for Cardinals Star Outfielder

The Kansas City Royals have opted to make a few moves to improve their roster ahead of the 2026 season, but a lot of their offseason improvement has been getting healthy.

They've seen Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic work back to full health after their seasons were cut short last year. Having these two at full strength is going to be massive for the Royals.

They swung a trade for Isaac Collins from the Milwaukee Brewers. With the season coming up, the Royals could look to add another outfielder from the National League Central.

Mike Axisa of CBS Sports recently put together a list of 10 trade candidates with a few suitors for each. Axisa suggested the Royals would be a landing spot for St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar.

Royals could bolster outfield with trade for Lars Nootbaar

"New POBO Chaim Bloom had an active offseason and moved nearly every veteran on the St. Louis roster (Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras, Brendan Donovan, Sonny Gray, etc.)," Axisa wrote. "Only Nootbaar remains, possibly because he had double heel surgery early in the offseason. He has never fully launched and lived up to the terrific contact quality numbers (exit velocity, etc.), though Nootbaar is a very good and very valuable player, one who is under team control for two seasons.

"He can hit leadoff and play center field in a pinch, and you needn't try hard to convince yourself there's upside beyond the near .800 OPS he's posted throughout his career. As with most players in this post, the question is not will Nootbaar get traded, but when. (That also applies to rental lefty reliever JoJo Romero. The Cardinals will move him soon enough.) Early possible landing spots: Diamondbacks, Mets, Royals."

This is the perfect buy low opportunity for the Royals. But it obviously comes with some risk.

Nootbaar is coming off a double heel surgery that kept him sidelined for the entire offseason. At this point, he's still not at 100 percent. He likely won't be back to 100 percent for a few more weeks, if not longer.

But this means he would likely be much cheaper to acquire than his production would indicate. When healthy, Noorbaar would be a solid outfielder for the Royals. He could likely be acquired for one or two top-30 prospects.

As long as the Cardinals don't overvalue him, this could be the perfect move to pursue for the Royal.

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