Back in the optimistic haze of spring training, San Francisco Giants first-year manager Tony Vitello made a folksy admission.
He said he’d “pay good money” to watch Rafael Devers and Robbie Ray ply their crafts.
It was a charming, baseball-guy quote and a sly nod to his lack of any professional baseball experience.
It doesn’t read back so charming now.
No, the irony of that quote is thicker than the fog over Oracle Park on a Tuesday in June.
Because the Giants are the ones paying Vitello more than good money — he’s believed to be the highest-paid first-time manager in baseball history — and if the first three games of the season are any indication, they’re paying him to just sit around and watch the Giants “work.”
He’s been bought a front-row seat to a disaster of a start.
It was just one game after the Opening Night debacle. It was just two games after a miserable one-hit dud on Friday.
And it was just one series after a brutal sweep, scoring just a single run across three games against an impressive Yankees team.
But is it too early to wonder exactly where Vitello is making his mark on this team?
After Game 2, the rookie skipper actually wondered aloud if he got his guys “too fired up” before the series. It was a genuinely hilarious notion, given that he was hired in large part to counter Bob Melvin’s famously phlegmatic management style.
But wait, too fired up? Where exactly was that blazing inferno of passion on the diamond? I won’t pretend to have watched every single agonizing inning without blinking, but did I somehow miss a sudden solar flare of positivity and excitement when I switched from the TV broadcast to the radio feed?
No, I don’t think I did.
I don’t expect a manager to magically turn around an entire organization in three regular-season games. Is it crazy for me to expect him to actually do something?
Games 1 and 2 provided little opportunity for managerial input. The lineup — which these days is unquestionably a collaborative effort (meaning the front office puts it together and the manager signs off on it) — stank out loud. But it isn’t like Vitello had much to do beyond the obvious while getting blown out on Wednesday and Friday.
But Saturday’s Game 3? Well, that was actually a competitive game for a few fleeting moments. And Vitello was just sitting there, getting paid good money to watch it happen.
I want to give the guy some grace; there’s a requisite feeling-out period to any new gig. But at some point, you have to do something. Saturday seemed like a good day for that.
Instead, Vitello decided not to pitch around (or straight-up walk) Aaron Judge with the bases empty and lefty specialist Ryan Borucki on the mound in the fifth inning. It was a decision that was deeply questionable in the moment, to say the very least. Righties boast an .848 OPS against Borucki in his career; lefties are at .524. With two left-handers waiting behind Judge in the lineup, you don’t give Judge a thing to hit.
Instead, Vitello watched Judge dent a parked ambulance with a no-doubt home run off a batting practice fastball.
Baseball is wonderfully unpredictable. That kind of outcome was not.
Two innings later, Vitello watched again as the Yankees brought in lefty reliever Tim Hill to face Jung Hoo Lee. Lee carries a career .596 OPS against lefties. But despite the Giants’ bench being stocked entirely with righties — including Jerar Encarnacion, who can ostensibly play the corner outfield in a pinch — Vitello sat on his hands and watched Lee strike out on three pitches.
(I don’t have a problem with riding with Devers against Hill an inning later. That’s the kind of player that deserves deference.)
It’s so easy to question these decisions in hindsight, and it’s especially easy after three frustrating, futile losses. Being a manager is hard; being a blowhard columnist after a series that brought national indignity to the local nine is easy.
But so far, with Vitello, we have only seen errors of omission, not errors of commission.
Only one of the two is forgivable over the long run, and it’s not the former.
It’s just three games — Vitello’s first three games. The Yankees came at the Giants with a wicked 1-2 at the top of their rotation, a hell of a pitcher in Will Warren to follow, a bullpen that is buck nasty, and, oh yeah, Judge, Bellinger, and Stanton in the middle of the lineup.
That’s a really, really good baseball team. We knew that would be the case going into the campaign.
But for someone who was already coming into the job with plenty of skepticism, leading a roster flawed enough to add premium fuel (at roughly the same cost) to that fire, has a second series of the season ever felt this desperately important?
Vitello’s honeymoon period — if he ever had one — is over.
The Giants wanted V-Ball. Brash, confident, possibly irreverent, and out there, looking to make life hell for everyone who played San Francisco.
Obviously, we haven’t seen it yet. Not even a hint of it.
I’d be nice to see something — anything — soon.