Intent is everything. If a pitcher wants to hit a batter, and then hits that batter, you can be certain that the batter knows what happened, and why.

When the pitcher didn’t mean to do it, though, things are usually different. Balls slip, plans go sideways, and sometimes hitters have to wear one just because that’s the way the game sometimes works. For the most part, everybody understands this and moves right along without devoting too much energy to the proceedings.

Usually.

Spring training is, by design, a place for players to work the winter kinks out of their games, so it should come as little surprise when the occasional fastball gets away from the occasional pitcher and ends up someplace it oughtn’t. Such a thing happened yesterday, and the A’s weren’t at all pleased.

Giants reliever Sam Dyson didn’t even have to hit the batter, Oakland slugger Khris Davis, to ignite anger. He only brushed him back with something high and tight.

Then again, Dyson had just given up three straight hits, including a double, an RBI single, and a two-run homer to Franklin Barreto, before Davis came to the plate, so perhaps the pitcher was acting in frustration. Ultimately, whether he meant it doesn’t really matter. The plausibility of intent was undeniable, and optics are everything when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Davis immediately had words for Dyson, and Giants catcher Nick Hundley had words for the A’s dugout. Dyson ended up rocked for four runs in two-thirds of an inning.

So a maybe-he-meant-it-but-probably-he-didn’t HBP went from nothing to something based on Davis’ reaction to Dyson, and Hundley’s ensuing reaction to Davis’ teammates. Things grew further inflamed when Roberto Gomez, the pitcher to follow Dyson, hit the first batter he faced, A’s prospect Ramon Laureano, on the hand. At that point intent ceased to matter. The Giants were officially throwing at Oakland, and Oakland felt the need to respond.

The mantle was taken up by right-hander Daniel Gossett, who got into 18 games for the A’s last year as a rookie and is hoping to land a rotation spot this season. After retiring the first four batters he faced, he planted a fastball into the back of Orlando Calixte, inspiring umpire Mike DiMuro to warn both benches against further such displays.* Calixte appeared to want a piece of the pitcher after scoring on Jarrett Parker’s double, but was instead directed to the dugout with no small urgency by teammate Mac Williamson.

Afterward, Giants manager Bruce Bochy didn’t want to talk about the confrontations, and A’s manager Bob Melvin dismissed the entire affair with the sentiment, “Boys will be boys.”

The Giants and A’s face each other six times this (and every) season (and once more in a split-squad game on Saturday), but this kind of thing will almost certainly be left behind in Arizona.

* When it comes to Gossett and Laureano alike, there’s no better way for a new pitcher to earn respect in a clubhouse than by standing up for his teammates. And there’s no more obvious way to stand up for teammates than a well-timed message pitch in response to some perceived injustice.