{"id":423007,"date":"2026-01-21T06:02:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423007\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T06:02:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T06:02:06","slug":"cardinals-showing-interest-in-austin-hays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/423007\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals Showing Interest In Austin Hays"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cardinals are among the teams that have expressed interest in free agent outfielder\u00a0Austin Hays<\/a>, reports Jon Heyman of The New York Post<\/a>. Heyman has previously linked Hays to the Yankees, Mets and Royals this offseason.<\/p>\n

St. Louis president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said over the weekend that the team was open to adding a righty-hitting outfielder<\/a>. Bloom\u2019s comments came in response to a fan question about\u00a0Harrison Bader<\/a>, yet Hays seems more in line with the kind of player the Cardinals would target. Bader should be able to command a multi-year deal on a team that\u2019d play him every day in center field, where St. Louis probably wants to continue giving Victor Scott II<\/a> a chance to develop offensively.<\/p>\n

Hays is likely to sign for much more cheaply on a one-year deal. He\u2019d be more of a rotational corner outfield piece, ideally used most often as a short side platoon bat. He\u2019s a career .282\/.340\/.479 hitter in a little over 800 plate appearances versus lefty pitching. The 30-year-old owns a slightly below-average .253\/.301\/.416 line in 1816 trips to the plate against right-handers. Last year\u2019s splits were even more extreme, as Hays had a .949 OPS against southpaws and a .708 mark without the platoon advantage.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals have the lefty-hitting Scott in center field and another left-handed bat,\u00a0Lars Nootbaar<\/a>, lined up to play left field. Nootbaar could be traded this offseason and seems more likely than not to move by the deadline.\u00a0Alec Burleson<\/a> is another left-handed hitter with ample corner outfield experience, but he\u2019s expected to be the primary first baseman after the\u00a0Willson Contreras<\/a> trade.<\/p>\n

Righty-swinging Jordan Walker<\/a> will probably get another chance in right field, but he has a minor league option remaining and hasn\u2019t found any kind of sustained MLB success. Prospect\u00a0Joshua Baez<\/a>, another righty bat, and lefty-hitting depth options Nathan Church<\/a> and Bryan Torres<\/a> are also on the 40-man roster. Hays has played exclusively left field over the past couple seasons. The Cardinals are also among the teams looking at Miguel Andujar<\/a>, who offers a similar skillset but will probably be a little more expensive coming off an excellent finish to the 2025 season with Cincinnati.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cardinals are among the teams that have expressed interest in free agent outfielder\u00a0Austin Hays, reports Jon Heyman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[31172,49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-423007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-austin-hays","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}