Giants manager Tony Vitello has had some ups and downs in his first season with the team after a distinguished career as the head coach at Tennessee.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez/S.F. Chronicle
When the San Francisco Giants hired Tony Vitello away from the University of Tennessee last fall, they knew there would be a learning curve.
A miserable April, mixed results since and two losses to open their current homestand have put Vitello’s decision-making in the spotlight, though underperformance from key hitters early on and insufficient bullpen options — a known issue going into the season — have fueled much of the Giants’ ill fortunes.
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Buster Posey and Zack Minasian, the baseball ops boss and general manager who hired a manager with no pro experience, believe that what Vitello brings will be worth the bumps at the start, even if those bumps look more like a mountain that San Francisco won’t be able to climb past this season.
“I think a lot of times a lot gets made of the X’s and O’s, because it’s what the public can see, and I think that’s something that’s to be determined,” Minasian said. “Tony has been great for us to work with. He’s a communicator, he’s passionate, he’s intense, he’s fun to be around. He tries to connect to each and every person he comes in contact with. I think the foundation and intangibles are there for him to be really successful at this, and I think everyone’s going to try and do their part to continue to try to help him as much as possible.”
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Grading a manager when the team isn’t yet at the halfway point, especially with someone of Vitello’s background, seems hasty even though the results aren’t what anyone envisioned.
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“I would say in my position I don’t feel comfortable evaluating somebody in that position after 60, 70 games,” Minasian said. “I would say that we lean on each other in this group and we want to challenge each other, so probably I’ll ask Tony for an evaluation of me, Buster, we’ll all talk and we want that type of feedback and hopefully we’re better off for it. It’s not one-sided.”
The fact remains that the team isn’t winning consistently. The season so far has been grim. This is a multi-system failure, Minasian emphasized.
“Any time when you do try to evaluate a situation, very rarely does that come down to one thing, it’s usually a lot of different things that just aren’t working as well as what you would hope,” Minasian said, adding that Logan Webb’s return to form should help the pitching staff as a whole and “then you hope you can get both firing at the same time, pitching and the offense, and start winning more games.”
The manager most often compared to Vitello has become one of baseball’s best — Pat Murphy of the NL Central-leading Brewers, who had great success at Arizona State before getting front-office and minor-league managing experience before working on Craig Counsell’s staff in Milwaukee. Murphy didn’t go straight from the college game to big-league managing, and he said he’d have been unable to do so.
“Knowing what I know now, there’s no way in hell I would have been ready for that,” Murphy said. “I think the difference is this guy’s sharper and I think he’s more balanced. I don’t know him that well, but he’s got a group of people around him ready to help him, and knowing Zack and Posey — I’m just judging Posey on the way he played the game, he knows that they’re going to help him through all this.”
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Brewers manager Pat Murphy, who spent time as the head coach at Arizona State, has enjoyed success in his 2½ seasons in Milwaukee.
Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press
Murphy said that when he was starting out as a big-league manager he found that it could be overwhelming at times.
“The speed of the game, the speed of decisions, the magnitude of small things. I tell everybody that the only analogy that makes sense to me is it’s harness racing compared to thoroughbred racing,” Murphy said. “That’s taking nothing away from the college game. It’s a great game, it’s better than ever.
“I’m still trying to get there. I’m still trying to become decent at it, but you can’t make it about yourself.”
Murphy and Vitello had an impromptu 45-minute chat in the outfield in Milwaukee last week and both said that was Murphy’s main point — remaining in the background. That is a tall order when Vitello is in such an unusual situation. Murphy said that the key is that managers must take themselves out of the equation internally so they can function at their best. Grinding on decisions isn’t helpful.
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“As soon as you realize all that suffering is your ego and it’s about you, then you’ll realize that that’s not healthy and it’s kind of selfish,” Murphy said. “Make it about the players and live by that creative credo — which is very, very hard, no matter how many years you’ve been doing it.”
Murphy said evaluating any manager is a tricky business because the roster ultimately determines results.
“A lot of it is dependent on the players we have and where they’re at in their career,” he said. “I’ve been very fortunate in my short career to have hungry players who are really interested in being really aware of winning baseball. I’m the beneficiary of that and having a wonderful organization that cares about winning. I don’t care about what other people are saying about it. I really don’t.”
Murphy believes the Giants have put together a good bunch who will give Vitello a good shot to turn things around.
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“I think he’s going to feel a lot better when the season ends, and you can take a bird’s-eye view, pull back and say, ‘OK, where do I need to improve?’” Murphy said. “Tony’s a bright guy who’s interested in getting it right, and I think he will.
“There’s a lot of time left in the season to make this a great story.”
What do you think of the job Tony Vitello has done as Giants manager?
The Giants have one of the worst records in baseball and Vitello’s decision-making has been under the microscope. How much blame falls on the manager for the team’s poor record?
It is tough to judge on a small and awkwardly disappointing sample. My only consistent observation/gripe is that TV is slow with the hook when a pitcher is struggling.
The team is finally starting to hit. Though a couple key guys are still struggling.
Ron Washington appears to be the Ground Ball Whisperer he was touted to be.
Go Giants !
Randy
Burlingame, CA
06/14/26
0
Vitello is certainly deserving of some of the blame, but with such a weak roster, most of the blame has to rest with the players themselves and with management. It’s puzzling how poorly the offense has been this year in light of the lineup but its hard to fathom how poorly the pitching has become–especially the bullpen. For as long as I can remember, the Giants have always focused on pitching first and now they stink. They let some great pitchers go….Kevin Gausman, Kyle Harrison, Blake Snell, Tyler Rogers, etc., and now they only have Logan Webb who is struggling. Posey has tried to build the offense at the expense of the pitching and it clearly hasn’t worked.