MLB world reacts to brutal umpire sequence in Cardinals-Cubs game

The St. Louis Cardinals had their six-game winning streak snapped in Friday afternoon’s game against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. In the top of the eighth inning, Chicago escaped a serious jam — with some help from home plate umpire, Ron Kulpa.

While they trailed 4-3, the Cardinals were in prime position to tie the game or even take the lead when they loaded the bases with only one out. It looked even better for the Cardinals when Chicago pitcher Mark Leiter Jr. was struggling with his control and fell behind 3-0 in the count against pinch-hitter Alec Burleson. That’s when Kulpa took over.

Leiter’s 3-0 pitch appeared to be well outside. Kulpa, though, called it a strike. The 3-1 pitch was even further outside. Again, Kulpa called a strike. Leiter’s 3-2 pitch was actually wider than either of the two pitches before it. Burleson, though, seeing what happened on the two previous pitches and not being able to risk being called for a third strike, offered at the pitch. He hit a sharp grounder to shortstop, which Chicago’s Nico Hoerner fielded and turned into an easy double play.

After the out was recorded at first, an angry Burleson turned around and began to yell at Kulpa for the two missed calls — and was promptly ejected.

Baseball fans ripped Kulpa for his crucial mistakes.

One of the longstanding habits of a lot of umpires is that they’ll tend to look for strikes with pitchers who are throwing a lot of them and look for balls when the pitchers are erratic. And while that can be frustrating, it’s understandable. In any walk of life, someone is a lot more likely to get the benefit of the doubt if he or she has shown it’s deserved. But that’s not what was happening here.

Leiter faced two hitters. The first was Brendan Donovan, who he walked. The second was Burleson.

Sequences like this are only going to make the calls for robot umpires louder and more prevalent.

[Rob Friedman]