Tuesday afternoon tidbits: Mather gets a big-boy number

Couple of late nuggets:

* Joe Mather has been issued No. 7, a significant improvement from the 62 he had been wearing. As always, nothing in Cardinals camp is accidental, and it’s hard to imagine them giving Mather a number like that if they didn’t expect him to wear it while riding around Busch Stadium in the back of a Ford.

* Brian Barden had the play of the scrimmage this afternoon, ranging deep into the hole at shortstop to backhand a ball and throw out Justin Knoedler. OK, it’s a catcher he threw out, but it was a very nice play. In his one tough chance, Skip Schumaker handled a ball nicely on a diving stop to his right LEFT (sorry, ack!), but made a somewhat errant throw (a tough throw, likely would have been scored a hit) on a ball hit by Joe Thurston.

* Didn’t see a lot of live BP (because there wasn’t much), but Chris Carpenter’s session looked a lot like his previous one. His command was a bit iffy, but his stuff was good — and the command got better as he went on.

-M.