reporting the news<\/a> Wednesday afternoon, after several days of speculation concerning Vitello\u2019s next move.<\/p>\nThe 47-year-old Vitello will become the first college coach to jump directly into a manager\u2019s role on the Major League Baseball level. He\u2019ll try to pump life into a Giants franchise that has not produced a team with a winning record or playoff appearance in the last four seasons.<\/p>\n
Vitello will replace Bob Melvin, who guided San Francisco to an 81-81 mark this year.<\/p>\n
According to reports, Vitello earned $3 million annually as the Vol coach. His buyout reportedly also is $3 million.<\/p>\n
UT Athletics Director Danny White confirmed the move Wednesday in a congratulatory message.<\/p>\n
“Congratulations to Tony on this incredible opportunity to lead the San Francisco Giants. We wish him the best as he embarks on this new chapter in his career and thank him for everything he has done to transform Tennessee baseball into a championship program.”<\/p>\n
White credited Vitello, in part, for\u00a0the upcoming $109 million renovation of Lindsey Nelson Stadium, home of the Vol baseball program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A St. Louis native, Vitello steered the Vols to unprecedented success during his eight seasons in Knoxville.<\/p>\n
He led the program to its first ever national championship in 2024 and guided Tennessee to six NCAA regional appearances, five NCAA super regionals and three College World Series appearances.<\/p>\n
The Vols in 2024 became the first SEC team to ever win 60 games in a season, finishing with a 60-13 record. UT became just the fourth program in history to win the SEC regular season crown, the SEC tournament title and the national championship in the same year.<\/p>\n
Vitello posted a 341-131 record in his eight seasons leading Tennessee, including a 125-85 record in SEC play.<\/p>\n
Tennessee\u00a0has\u00a0had 52\u00a0players drafted since 2018 when Vitello\u00a0took over as head coach, averaging 6.5\u00a0picks per year. Since 2021, the Vols’\u00a042\u00a0total draft selections lead the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello will leave the Tennessee baseball program to become manager of the San Francisco Giants. The Athletic,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[10934,10913,3834,101,4820,103,102,104,106,105,15400,10892],"class_list":{"0":"post-18270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bob-melvin","9":"tag-knoxville","10":"tag-major-league-baseball","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-giants","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-tennessee-volunteers-baseball","19":"tag-tony-vitello"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18270","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=18270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}