JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals starter Mark Mulder passed another mile marker in his lengthy trek back to the rotation by throwing batting practice to three minor leaguers early Saturday morning. The lefty threw 30 pitches and improved tremendously from the first batch of 15 to the second.

“I could come away and say my command wasn’t very good but I didn’t really think it was going to be,” Mulder said. ”Did I make a handful of decent pitches? Yeah. Took me a while to get loose. … The last 15 I was much more pleased with.”

Mulder is recovering from two shoulder surgeries that truncated his past two seasons with the Cardinals. An issue since he arrived in St. Louis, Mulder’s delivery have been smooth and effective this spring. During the live batting practice sessions Saturday, his left shoulder no longer showed the lag or hitch that caused him such troubles in recent summers — and led to the discovery of the torn rotator cuff within.

The lefty threw to Oliver Marmol, Allen Craig and Daniel Descalso.

In the first half of his throw, Mulder’s pitches strayed high and he couldn’t get control of his curveball. That changed about the time coach Derek Lilliquist announced that Mulder was halfway through.

“I thought from the beginning he put everything together,” said manager Tony La Russa, who watched from the first-base dugout. “He made a bunch of good throws. For the first time against a hitter, I thought he was very impressive.”

His final five hitters went this way:

• Mulder busted a cutter in on Marmol that snapped the kid’s bat. F6.
• Craig bounced a sinker to third. 5-3.
• Descalso lined a high fastball to right field for a single.
• Marmol chopped out. 6-3.
• Craig fouled a pitch off, way high curving away from right field. Then Craig popped up to short.

Mulder’s throw drew a crowd, including the front-office brain trust (John Mozeliak, John Abbamondi, Alan Benes, et. al.), pitchers Chris Carpenter and Jason Isringhausen, and the pitching coach staff of Dave Duncan and Marty Mason.

While a watershed day in Mulder’s recovery Saturday does little more than offer a hint of his coming timetable. Matt Clement, for example, was conservative and threw batting practice four times before being scheduled for Tuesday’s Triple-A start. Teammates and coaches have been struck by how well Mulder has been throwing, hinting that he could follow a traditional schedule instead of the conservative one set for Clement, who is building back from a year missed after shoulder surgery.

The idea has been to get Mulder against hitters before the team leaves Florida (check), get him into a competition in April, and then off on a rehab assignment to prep for a May return.

“He’s looking more like himself,” La Russa said this morning. “He feels physically very good. Breaking it down and trying to evaluate it while he’s still working the process is not smart.”

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