JUPITER, Fla. • During the 12 days he spent in baseball limbo last summer, Jeremy Hazelbaker returned home after being released by the Dodgers and worked on the swing that had betrayed him. He ran, he lifted, and he hit and he hit, working to stay ready for the next job offer and distracting himself from the fact not one team called.

“It was definitely an interesting time period,” he said this spring. “I was waiting for that team to pick me up or give me a second chance. A week and a half. It was a week and a half without any phone calls.”

And then the Cardinals rang.

What followed those 12 days of uncertainty has been 10 months of opportunity as Hazelbaker rose from minor-league free agent to, this spring, a bat the Cardinals cannot ignore.

Hazelbaker, 28, has been one of the Cardinals’ most aggressive and productive players during spring training. The lefthanded-hitting outfielder laced a 3-2 pitch with two outs in the ninth inning Monday for a two-run homer, tying him for the team lead with two. He has built on the .333 average and .594 slugging percentage he had at Class AAA Memphis, the punctuation on a season that he said “started off rough and ended great, my best season yet.”