The St. Louis Cardinals closed the book on their Aug. 3 trade of outfielder Lars Nootbaar on Thursday, acquiring right-hander Brian Curley from the Arizona Diamondbacks as the player to be named later in the deal.
This finishes a deadline swap that already sent right-hander Daniel Eagen and left-hander Sandro Santana to St. Louis. Nootbaar, under team control through 2027, went the other way and posted a .244/.353/.409 line with five home runs and 17 RBIs in 42 games for Arizona.
Adam Akbani on X (formerly Twitter): “Brian Curley is the PTBNL from the Lars Nootbaar tradeHere are his pitch specs from his senior season at Georgia in 2025:4SFB: 95-96 MPH, T-99.5, 17 IVB, 5.4 vREL, flat VAACutter: 88 MPH, slutter shapeSlider: 84-85 MPH, 9 in. gloveside movementCurveball: 80-81 MPH pic.twitter.com/ZM6CPF0DRt / X”
Brian Curley is the PTBNL from the Lars Nootbaar tradeHere are his pitch specs from his senior season at Georgia in 2025:4SFB: 95-96 MPH, T-99.5, 17 IVB, 5.4 vREL, flat VAACutter: 88 MPH, slutter shapeSlider: 84-85 MPH, 9 in. gloveside movementCurveball: 80-81 MPH pic.twitter.com/ZM6CPF0DRt
Curley, 23, is a power arm with a starter’s workload and a reliever’s projection. The Diamondbacks took him 92nd overall in the 2025 draft out of Georgia and signed him for an under-slot $700,000 bonus. He did not pitch professionally that summer. In 2026 he opened at High-A Hillsboro, moved to Double-A Amarillo in July, and finished with a 5.28 ERA over 116 innings in 25 appearances (23 starts). He struck out 130 and walked 34.
The surface numbers are ordinary. The underlying ones are more useful. Curley punched out 25.3 percent of the batters he faced and walked only 6.6 percent, with a 43.2 percent ground-ball rate. At High-A he was better than the ERA suggested: 4.52 over 69 2/3 innings, with a 3.54 FIP and 90 strikeouts against 17 walks. Double-A was harder. He allowed a 6.41 ERA in 46 1/3 innings after the promotion, a common first taste of the Texas League for a pitcher still sorting a starter’s pitch mix.
Baseball America had ranked him around No. 19–20 in the Diamondbacks system. MLB Pipeline’s preseason grades put a 60 on the fastball, a 60 on the slider, a 50 on the curveball, a 45 on control, and a 40 overall.
The fastball is the carrying tool. It sits 94–97 mph, touches 100, and plays up on a low release and an unusual approach angle, with above-average carry. The best secondary is a mid-to-upper-80s slider with depth and power; he also shows a cutter-ish harder breaker, a 78–82 mph curve with more vertical snap, and a sweeper that can blend into the other breaking balls. A fringe-average changeup is in the bag but was not a college staple. Command is good enough when the stuff is loud, not yet consistent enough to lock in a rotation role.
The profile explains the mixed reviews. Curley is listed at 5-foot-10 and about 200–212 pounds, with a high-effort delivery out of the windup. He redshirted at Virginia Commonwealth while recovering from Tommy John surgery, pitched two seasons there, went undrafted as a signee when the Pirates took him in the 16th round in 2024, and transferred to Georgia. In Athens he became the Friday starter, posting a 3.55 ERA with 85 strikeouts and 27 walks in 66 innings, starting 10 of 17 games. Evaluators have long viewed the fastball-slider combination as high-leverage relief material if starting does not stick. Arizona planned to give him the rotation first. St. Louis inherits that same fork in the road.
For a club that has spent the last year trading controllable veterans for arms, Curley fits the pattern. He is not a finished product, and the Double-A ERA is a reminder of that. He is also a recent third-round pick with plus velocity, a bat-missing slider, and strike-throwing traits that survived a jump in level. Eagen and Santana have already shown swing-and-miss after the deadline. Curley is the third piece of that return, and the one the Cardinals still have the most room to shape.
Adam Akbani on X (formerly Twitter): “Fun fact: Brian Curley threw 5 shutout innings with no BB and 5 Ks against Springfield in the Texas League Championship Series on 9/22 / X”
Fun fact: Brian Curley threw 5 shutout innings with no BB and 5 Ks against Springfield in the Texas League Championship Series on 9/22
