Brief, Related Notes On A So-Far Excellent ALCS

Obviously, it’s excellent that the Tigers were able to take the first two games at beautiful new 1% Assholes Who Leave After the Fifth Inning Stadium.  Since as his press conference the Yankee manager was looking to blame people other than his players, a few points:

• Obviously, the call on Infante’s Willie Mays Hays slide was ludicrously bad, and was the second important bad call to go against the Yankees in two games.
• But as I said about the Twins after the Yankees benefited from the equally amateurish stylings of Phil Cuzzi in the 2009 ALDS, Girardi needs to do more thinkin’ and less whinin’.  I don’t really want to hear a lot about the umpires  when your team has scored zero runs in the 20 1/3 innings where they haven’t been hitting against the worst pitcher on the Tigers roster.
• I’ll also note that as with a lot of  “unearned” runs you can’t place the responsibility for the two runs that followed the blown call entirely on the umpire.  If Logan and the greatest pitcher athlete in Yankee known human history can get outs the 2nd and 3rd runs don’t cross the plate.
• If Girardi’s rant adds the impetus for more replay, then it’s a contribution to the public interest anyway.  I agree that the pacing of the game complaints aren’t really serious, particularly given that Selig has been notably uninterested in much more serious pacing issues.   Telling the umpires not to grant time to hitters except in extreme circumstances — which should absolutely be done anyway — would more for makeup for any delays caused by occasional reviews.