Vitello could be a Giant wake-up call

A college coach finally becomes a big-league manager.

Tony Vitello at Tennessee

Amid all the splashdowns and the garlic fries and the Ghiardelli, the San Francisco Giants are baseball’s version of vanilla extract. When the ballparks and the concessions are the only places you can find the personality of a franchise, action is required.

Tony Vitello, who never has spent a day in professional baseball, became the Giants’ manager on Wednesday. He signed a 3-year contract worth over $10 million total. By contrast, the Angels signed Kurt Suzuki, a 16-year major league catcher who was one of their special front office advisers, to a one-year contract, basically because general manager Perry Minasian also has one year left. One franchise, having painted itself in a corner, just repainted the boundary. The other gleefully spray-painted its facade and strobe-lighted the clubhouse. The Angels have had nine consecutive losing seasons and are somehow risk-averse. The Giants, with Buster Posey running the show for the only team he ever played for, are throwing away everything beige.

In the four seasons since the Giants won 107 games, they have finished 81-81 twice, including this season, and are six games below .500 overall. They were 10th in the National League in runs scored this year. They were ninth in the league in runs permitted. Cue up John C. Reilly singing “Cellophane” in “Chicago.” Although Posey pulled off a trade for Rafael Devers, and Justin Verlander seemed to recapture his prime down the stretch, they have no audible sizzle, and yet they almost drew 3 million.

Well, there was one source of excitement. Drew Gilbert came up on August 8, to the clash of his own cymbals. He flipped his bat when he homered, he applauded as he advanced from first to second on a balk, and he never shut up. His teammates, once they realized they couldn’t shush him or stuff him into a locker, appreciated all that joy. The games piled up on Gilbert, as they do on most rookies, and he wound up hitting .190 but, as it turned out, he was the canary in the coal mine. He had played for Vitello at Tennessee, where the preening, strutting Volunteers were the polarizers of the Southeastern Conference. He came to prepare a place for Vitello, who won 72 percent of his games in Knoxville, including 60 wins in 2024.

You can’t say Vitello, 47, hasn’t enhanced his profession. He was already making $3 million a year. At one point the Volunteers went to three College World Series in four years, and the 2022 edition won 57 and lost eight. That club was likened to some of the best of all-time before it fell to Notre Dame in the super-regional, and it also led the country in buttons pushed. Gilbert reached new vistas in bat-flipping when he hit a grand slam to beat Kent State, and Jordan Beck flipped the bird to Georgia Tech outfielders as he doubled to give Tennessee a lead.

Vitello called Beck “Mike Honcho,” referring to a character that Reilly played in “Talladega Nights.” He said Beck was “actually a 35-year-old man who forged his transcript, but he is a good kid, so when he shows up we put him in the lineup.”

Vanderbilt pitcher JD Thompson called the Volunteers a “mouthy group” and wondered why they hadn’t joined the WWE. In truth, most college players will celebrate theier first-inning, two-out singles like they just won Family Feud. It’s way, way out of control, and it’s bleeding into major league baseball. But Vitello will be the last to insist on decorum, or to ask his players to act like they’ve “been there before.”

“I think people would be shocked at how much I’m for going back to the old way we did it,” Vitello told an interviewer last year, “and you hit a double and just stand on second base, but we’re not going to get many recruits if we’re the only program doing that. But in order to be the guy who stands at home plate and flips his bat, you have to work your butt off to be in that position. As a player I think you’ve earned the right. To me it’s the most fun. It’s definitely the most-watched era of college baseball right now.”

Substantively, Vitello should help San Francisco’s pitching. Among those who hailed the hire was Max Scherzer, since Vitello was his pitching coach at Missouri. Garrett Crochet was one of the two best pitchers in the American League this year, and he was a Volunteer, as were Chase Dollander and Chase Burns.

He is also savvy enough to hire a veteran coaching staff, particularly a bench coach who knows personnel. The Giants interviewed Brandon Hyde, a former A.L. Manager of the Year with Baltimore, and someone like him would be an ideal No. 2. Whether Vitello can bond with today’s player is a question that won’t be answered until mid-2026, but a lot of that involves leadership, which is a skill that can’t be taught. Vitello was the Man Out Front every time Tennessee played in the SEC, especially on the road, where bench jockeys still live and thrive.

“He hasn’t played pro baseball,” Gilbert told The Athletic. “I’m biased but personally I don’t give a shit. What we’ve been doing hasn’t worked. And he’s probably the best people person I’ve ever been around, so I’m not really concerned about him getting the vibe of the clubhouse or whatnot. That’s one of the easier transitions he’ll have to make.

“He organically brings out the best in you. Not only is it demanded, but it’s demanded with a little extra flavor.”

One can rightfully expect Vitello to be on the top step whenever the Giants play the Dodgers. Of all the failings in San Francisco, the most prominent is the way they allowed the Dodgers to consider San Diego their main antagonist.

The real force behind Vitello’s hiring was the success of Pat Murphy, the reigning and perhaps future N.L. Manager of the Year. The Brewers’ skipper coached at Notre Dame and Arizona State before he was felled by scandal, and Craig Counsell, whom Murphy had coached in South Bend, called and got him a job in the Milwaukee system. Murphy wasn’t popular with his college peers either, but he managed to prod the Brewers into self-belief while making them laugh as well. MLB executives, some of whom saw their baseball journey end on a college diamond, realized that Jimmy Johnson, Gregg Popovich, Bob Johnson and Bruce Arena were once college coaches, too.

Most likely Vitello will rise and fall on the arms and the bats of the Giants, not through any cosmic personal connection. Is it a risk? Not really. The risk would be another droning year of flat baseball, in a city that’s anything but.