What were all the other Giants up to during the fight?

After yesterday’s Melee By The Bay (TM me, please send me three dollars just for reading that phrase), we saw many, many Takes about the central question: Was Hunter Strickland wrong to throw at Bryce Harper, or was Hunter Strickland so wrong that he created a new universe of wrongness in which he could live alone, wrong, for eternity? We’ll never know the answer to that question, so instead I’m gonna focus on all the identifiable Giants who weren’t Hunter Strickland and what they were up to here.

We have all been told repeatedly that Buster Posey is a bad person for not stopping Harper from going after Strickland (even once by an anonymous Giant!), but it bears repeating: Once your teammate actively decides to put his own weird need for revenge over the team, it is your responsibility to back your teammate up wholeheartedly, putting your own physical well being into jeopardy not only during the fight but also during the at bat you will take at some point over the next couple of games where you get a baseball thrown at you at a very high speed. This is just common sense. The Bad Teammate in this situation is obviously Buster Posey.

But what about the rest of the Giants? How did they comport themselves?

First off, there’s Jeff Samardzija and Michael Morse, who, while trying very hard to get involved in the fight, were not 100% able to hit the guy they were trying to hit.

Whoopsie doodle!

Not everyone could be involved, of course. Madison Bumgarner, on the DL, had to slowly fade into the back of the dugout, not just because of his injury, but also due to league rules prohibiting guys on the DL from coming onto the field.

League rules, however, are no match for the power of Hunter Pence’s desire to be a good teammate. Pence came onto the field and, along with George Kontos and Mac Williamson, dragged Strickland back to the dugout so that he could stop making a dang fool of himself.

Here are my favorite parts of this one:

1. Williamson picking up Strickland’s leg, obviously
2. Mark Gardner giving Strickland a little push back to the dugout before giving up because, really, he’s not actually helping
3. Unknown Giants Coach (Steve Decker? I thought it was Phil Nevin but another angle shows him without a jacket on) coming over at the end like he’s going to help at all by just saying words.
4. Strickland grabbing Righetti’s jacket like, man, I’m so close to convincing him to let me get back out there, this is definitely gonna do it for me for sure.

My least favorite part is Strickland grabbing at Pence’s face, which is not a nice thing to do to anyone, much less a teammate, much less a good teammate who’s trying to help you and will face some kind of discipline from the league for it.

Next up, the other infielders!

Let’s rank them:

1. Joe Panik, coming in like he means business, getting grabbed and tossed aside by Jayson Werth like a paper clip, and then jogging back towards the pile even though he knows that there will be no fighting today.
2. Christian Arroyo, not bothering to hide that he wants absolutely no part of this dumb business whatsoever.
3. Brandon Crawford, jogging in solely so people don’t get mad at him for not being part of the brawl, but also wanting absolutely no part of this dumb business whatsoever

Please also note that this camera angle shows Posey eventually jogging in himself, with some Giant pushing him back away from the scrum.

Now let’s see what other angles we can look at. Here’s one!

This would appear to be Josh Osich eventually jumping on the pile, with Gorkys Hernandez and Jose Alguacil standing around ineffectually. At least none of them hit another Giant!

Here we see Aaron Hill, Brandon Belt, Justin Ruggiano, and Cory Gearrin all hanging out on the periphery of the pile, with Phil Nevin way on the right side at the end trying to pull some Giant away from some National. That’s good coaching!

Denard Span, Johnny Cueto, and Ron Wotus can be seen milling around in the background here as the big boys try to wrestle Strickland back to the dugout.

And here’s Bryan Morris running in at the end! Look, I never promised that these guys would be doing anything interesting, which is good, because I knew damn well that wouldn’t be the case.

With the assumption that Eduardo Nuñez was in the clubhouse and therefore not available to come out on the field, this accounts for all the active Giants other than Blach, Cain, Law, Melancon, Moore, and Hundley, who were all (presumably) the guys in jackets who could not be identified from behind when looking at GIFs of videos found on YouTube.

Thank you for your time. I hope you tell your friends to click on this article and also please don’t throw baseballs at people.