Dodgers fans are losing their minds over horrendous strike calls that sunk LA

After walking it off the night before, the Los Angeles Dodgers were looking to win the weekend series against the Chicago Cubs in a Sunday matinee. With ace Julio Urias on the bump, it looked like LA had a great chance of advancing to two games over .500 for the season.

Like in several other games this season, though, the bats fell flat. A Chris Taylor solo home run was the team's only run until the seventh inning, where Mookie Betts was gifted an RBI single thanks to Seiya Suzuki losing a flyball in the sun. On the other side, the Cubs continued mashing home runs at Chavez Ravine with Cody Bellinger mashing a moonshot to chase Julio Urias in the sixth.

All that being said, the Dodgers still had a chance to repeat Saturday night's heroics with a one-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth. Unfortunately, the game was completely taken out of the Dodgers' hands by an umpire that seemingly just wanted to get out of the LA sun.

To make matters worse, the 3-2 strike call on Jason Heyward was not the first missed call in the at-bat. The previous pitch also missed inside and home plate umpire Sean Barber called that a strike as well.

Cubs fans would say that Heyward should have learned from the call and protected the plate on 3-2. Any other reasonable human would say that the umpire should be able to do his job without messing it up this badly in the ninth inning.

Jason Heyward savagely roasts umpire who stole the ninth inning from the Dodgers

Heyward was not going to sit back and refrain from making any comments on Barber's ninth inning after the game. The former Cubs outfielder outlined just how bad the umpiring was with a comment that might not sit very well with the league office.

This might not seem like a big deal to some fans considering we are still in April and there are 146 more games to be played this season. While that is true, Dodgers fans should know from experience how impactful a bad call can be on the entire season.

The team's streak of winning the NL West was snapped in 2021 as the San Francisco Giants finished one game ahead of the Dodgers with 107 wins. That included a controversial no-call on a Darin Ruf check swing that obviously broke the plate in the ninth inning. That lose the Dodgers the game, and consequentially, the entire division.

Hopefully, this horrendous showing in the ninth inning won't have that kind of impact. But then again, Barber probably owes an apology to LA and all of the fans that had to drive home unhappy.