More Replay: Rays looking for loopholes | Giants, D-Backs show flaws

It was only a matter of time. During Thursday night's Yankees-Astros game at Minute Maid Park, the umpiring crew inadvertently showed us how teams can exploit the new replay system.

During the ninth inning, home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi lost track of the count and used replay to confirm whether Yankees rookie Yangervis Solarte was sitting on a 2-1 or 3-1 count. Here's the video:

The Astros did not challenge the play. Cuzzi and crew chief Gerry Davis went to the replay themselves, which they can do because it was after the sixth inning. Houston catcher Carlos Corporan did egg them on a little bit. From MLB.com's Bryan Hoch:

"I asked the umpire, 'What's the count?'" Corporan said. "And he said, 'I don't know, I've got 2-1.' I said, 'I've got 2-1 as well.' I kind of forgot about the pitchout that we made. [Solarte] was like, 'No, it's 3-1,' and [the umpire] said, 'Of course you're going to think it's 3-1.' They wanted to make sure, so they took a little time."

The challenge, the first for both the Yankees and Astros, took two minutes and 20 seconds. Crew chief Gerry Davis and veteran umpire Phil Cuzzi both used the headsets near the third-base dugout for the replay.

"I give the crew credit," Astros manager Bo Porter said. "They came together, and because there was some indecision, I guess they decided to go ahead and make the count right. We had 3-1 the entire time."

"They did they right thing. They checked," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "If you happen to be wrong and you don't check, you're going to look foolish."

The review officially clocked in at two minutes and 20 seconds -- the replay crew at MLB's headquarters had to go back and watch the entire at-bat, basically -- but watch the embedded video above and you can see Solarte, Corporan and Cuzzi stood around talking about the count before the actual replay was made. I unofficially clock the whole ordeal at three minutes and 15 seconds.

Now, I don't doubt that this was an honest mistake and Cuzzi did legitimately forget the count, but what we see here is a way for teams to stall and give relievers more time to warm up. Three minutes is an eternity in bullpen time, enough for a reliever to go from ice cold to nearly game-ready. The Astros did have a pitcher warming in the bullpen during the replay, but they did not make a pitching change.

Since the count is a reviewable play -- other record-keeping issues like substitutions, the numbers of outs and even the score are reviewable as well -- managers can challenge the count in the late innings and buy time for their relievers to get ready. Assuming he has a challenge remaining, of course. They don't even need to win the challenge, the extra time is the key to the whole thing.

Think of this as the state of the art version of stalling. Instead of having the current pitcher throw over to first a bunch of times or sending the catcher out to the mound to chat, the manager can burn his challenge to give his bullpen an extra two or three minutes to warm up. It's not against the rules, but it's not why the new replay system was implemented either.