Cardinals news and notes: Reyes, Rosenthal, Oh

The 7th inning of last night’s Nationals Dodgers elimination game took 1 hour and 6 minutes. It was about 15% exciting and the rest boring. In fact, the inning took so long that the DC Metro system decided to just pack up and leave.

As a usual DC resident currently on sabbatical, I was with those National fans in spirit.

Anyway, as you can guess there have been been at least two 9-inning MLB games that started and finished faster than last night’s 7th inning. As you can guess, they were both more than 90 years ago. But the quickest professional baseball game also involved some train issues. Take it away, Chicago Tribune:

But the fastest game in professional baseball history was three years earlier, on Aug. 30, 1916, in Asheville, N.C., between the Asheville Tourists and the Winston-Salem Twins.

"It was one of the last games of the 1916 Class D regular season, and the Twins had a three o'clock train to catch out of Asheville," according to a CBSsports.com story. "The problem? The game was scheduled to start at 2 o'clock."

So the two teams agreed to start more than a half-hour early and to play as quickly as possible, the pitchers lobbed the ball and the batters swung at the first pitch.

Time of the game: 31 minutes. The game ended before it was officially scheduled to begin. Twins won 2-1.

Here’s what you may have missed yesterday at VEB:

Reyes/Rosenthal tandem

Joe Schwarz has an innovative idea for the rotation next year. I love it, it’s a great idea, which guarantees that it will never happen.

Seung Hwan Oh

I wrote why I think it would be a good idea to pitch Seung Hwan Oh in high leverage situations next year rather than save him for the 9th inning.

Farm Report

Here’s where you can find the latest news on all Cardinals’ affiliates.

Carlos Martinez

And here’s a compilation of Carlos Martinez’s best starts.

Have a great weekend, everyone.