One of our regular offseason traditions is the Exit Interview, where we look back at each player that got into a game for the St. Louis Cardinals in the past season. This is the 11th season we’ve done this and it’s a good way to get a view of the whole year, not just a short stretch of games. It’s sort of like a performance review before the players went off to their offseason work, spending a little time with Oli Marmol and going over what went right, what went wrong. Stats and grades are only for a player’s time in St. Louis, though splits numbers may include other teams. As always, my sincere thanks to the legend of cardinalsgifs for providing the header image!
Player: Cory Spangenberg
Season stats: 1 G, 0.0 bWAR, 0.0 fWAR
Statcast: None
Best Statcast category: None
Worst Statcast category: None
Hero/Goat: None
Grade: C
Positives: Spent another year in professional baseball…had 10 homers at Memphis….stole 14 bases in 17 minor league attempts….got another couple of days in the bigs.
Negatives: Hit .236 at Memphis in 382 at bats….struck out 135 times.
Overview: Exactly what is there to say about Spangenberg? He was a good friend of Skip Schumaker‘s, which probably led to him getting a minor league invite to spring training. However, it took the two biggest stars on the team not being vaccinated for COVID and the team going to Canada to get him to the majors for that series and even then he didn’t get into a game until the final frame, so he didn’t take an at bat. The club released him after the season, to no one’s surprise.
Outlook: Schumaker’s the manager in Miami now, so we’ll see if Spangenberg makes it into the Marlins system or whether he winds up as a coach. Given that he’s had no plate appearances in the bigs since 2019 and he’ll be 32 when nest season starts, it’s fair to think his career is strictly minor league from here on out, so he might want to make the shift to the coaching side of things.
