{"id":181055,"date":"2026-02-17T05:08:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/181055\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T05:08:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:08:20","slug":"tony-vitello-wants-to-know-who-leaked-his-interest-in-giants-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/181055\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello wants to know who leaked his interest in Giants job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Vitello<\/a> started his press conference Monday morning<\/a> with a question of own that he wanted answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen did when did you first think I was taking this job?\u201d the first-year San Francisco Giants manager asked while surrounded by reporters. \u201cDo you remember that far back?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer was around four or five days before Vitello was actually announced as the new manager of the Giants, confirming his departure after eight unforgettable seasons at Tennessee.<\/p>\n

The timing of the reporting is what Vitello appeared to take exception with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that\u2019s funny you say that,\u201d Vitello said, \u201cbecause that was not reality at all. I don\u2019t know if Buster (Posey)<\/a> would feel the same way, but that wasn\u2019t the case. Somebody decides they think they got the information.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final blow was about four days later.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Athletic reported Tony Vitello\u2019s interest in the Giants on October 18<\/p>\n

The Athletic<\/a> reported on the afternoon of October 18 that San Francisco was \u201cclosing in\u201d on the hiring of Vitello as the club\u2019s next manager. It was announced by the Giants<\/a> and made official four days later, on October 22.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the days in between, Vitello continued coaching his Vols through fall workouts in Knoxville. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the thing,\u201d Vitello continued on Monday, \u201cI\u2019m just kind of having a conversation, therapy, if you will, from walking out of there. But I needed confirmation from the coaches that I worked with, that helped boost my status, that they were okay with what was going to go on, and they were going to be okay with their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the reporting \u2014 Vitello was on the field with his team with the initial report surfaced \u2014 was creating a sizable wake within the Tennessee baseball program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat staff had always been built as next man up, and all of a sudden that was being threatened,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cSo it was kind of hard to do something for yourself, and your teammates get left behind. But yeah, it was not four days, for what it\u2019s worth. That was not the case at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you would\u2019ve seen me in my condo, you would\u2019ve, you would\u2019ve agreed. So but anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vitello was then asked why he was discussing the move nearly four months later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause somebody tweeted it out,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who told them. I wish I did. And it might have changed the course of history if I would\u2019ve known who did, to be honest with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it just bothers me because, I don\u2019t know, you see people angry on the \u2014 I hate to get philosophical \u2014 but you see people angry on the streets for, a lot of times, stuff that\u2019s not even true, you know? People arguing, and you don\u2019t know what reality is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Vitello led Vols to national championship, three trips to College World Series<\/p>\n

Vitello took Tennessee from the bottom of the SEC to the top of the college baseball world during his time with the Vols. He led the program to its first national championship in a 60-win season in 2024, one of three trips to the College World Series in Omaha.<\/p>\n

In just his second season he had Tennessee back in an NCAA Tournament regional, where the Vols had not been since 2005. They went to Omaha in 2021, 2023 and 2024 and made Super Regional appearances last season and in 2022.<\/p>\n

His move to the Giants made him the first college baseball coach to get a Major League Baseball job with no previous coaching experience in professional baseball.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a really damn good job at keeping that away from our team, our recruiting, and it was not a distraction,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cAnd then all of a sudden, in the middle of practice, I see our first and third base coach freaking out, and they freaked out on me, too. And for no reason, because at that point, nothing was going to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut somebody decided that it was going to happen, and then the whole world started spinning real, real quick. And I had to address the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

That brought Vitello to his next point: His departure was not a distraction with his players. Not before, during or after those four days in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd people said either that or me leaving was a distraction,\u201d he said. \u201cThose guys are SEC athletes. They ain\u2019t distracted by me. We dealt with years where they thought we might take a job or we were offered a job or there was jobs open. I\u2019d meet with guys in the office, they\u2019re like: \u2018Coach, we don\u2019t care.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guys care about the guys when the season\u2019s going on, and hopefully they love their coaches, but that thing was never a distraction. They got talent and they got good kids, so they\u2019re going to be just fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tennessee over the weekend swept Nicholls to open the 2026 season under new head coach Josh Elander \u2014 Vitello\u2019s former associate head coach and recruiting coordinator \u2014 playing in a new-look Lindsey Nelson Stadium, which just finished a $105.1 million renovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Giants open their spring training schedule on Saturday in the Cactus League in Arizona and open the regular-season schedule against the Yankees on MLB Opening Night March 25 at Oracle Park in San Francisco. <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that was not a fun Saturday,\u201d Vitello said, \u201cand then it kind of affected how the next few days went. But ultimately, sorry to rain on your parade. Great organization, great people to work with and a great challenge, so (I) didn\u2019t say no.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello started his press conference Monday morning with a question of own that he wanted answered. \u201cWhen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[10157,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-181055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-regwall","9":"tag-san-francisco","10":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","11":"tag-san-francisco-news","12":"tag-sf","13":"tag-sf-headlines","14":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}