San Francisco Giants: Buster Posey and Brandon Belt Arguing is Nothing

The San Francisco Giants won a game Saturday. It was a 13 inning game. It was a tense game. And it led to an apparent argument between All-Stars Buster Posey and Brandon Belt.

Both players were asked about the possible dust up and played down the incident in the aftermath of the game.

When Posey and Belt talked to reporters, they said they wouldn’t discuss it.

“Whatever happens between us, it’s just going to stay on the field,” Posey said. “I won’t talk about it in the media. That’s something we’ll handle together.”Said Belt: “Yeah, I mean, nothing really happened, so … that’s really all I have to say about it. Stuff happens on the field and we’ll just keep it between us.”

“That’s something we’ll handle together.”

That quote is everything in this discussion as to whether this apparent problem will linger or will impact future games. The Giants have been heralded for their team chemistry in recent years and it is rare to see something like this happen on the field.

However, this can be chalked up to a frustrating start to the season and two competitors in the middle of a 13 inning game that was scoreless for the first 12.

Fans who have been critical of the Giants in recent seasons feel as though the team somehow lacks passion.

While ace Madison Bumgarner is sometimes criticized for being over emotional, other leaders like Posey, Belt, Hunter Pence, Brandon Crawford, and Joe Panik show much less emotion during the game.

When a team is struggling, it is easier for fans to say the team lacks fire than to say the team lacks talent. When the Giants struggled to win games in April, more was said about players not looking passionate enough instead of looking at the players missing from the roster.

When the Giants added 21 year old rookie Christian Arroyo, his first few hits led to some big moments and his bases clearing double seemed to be the spark and the passion this team was missing.

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But, if you look closer, you would see that the team’s best players just don’t operate that way. Posey and Belt take a much more professional approach to the plate and in the field. When they make a mistake, they rarely show emotion.

For fans to criticize a lack of passion from the best players on the team and then also be critical of Posey and Belt in this instance shows a lack of consistency.

For the fans that appreciate that not every player is wired the way that Bumgarner is, they can understand that sometimes players leave their emotions for the locker room.

And for the fans that are frustrated that those emotions bled onto the field in this one moment, they need to understand that these players care as much as fans do too. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, they can’t prevent some of that emotion from being made public.

Next: SF Giants Minor League Update

To Posey and Belt’s credit, they are refusing to let it stay public, because that’s something they’ll handle together.