{"id":188922,"date":"2026-02-22T15:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/188922\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:22:07","slug":"tony-vitello-debuts-as-san-franciscos-manager-in-mlb-spring-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/188922\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello debuts as San Francisco&#8217;s manager in MLB spring training"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Feb. 22, 2026, 9:48 a.m. ET<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">San Francisco opened spring training under first-year manager <a href=\"http:\/\/volswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/college\/volunteers\/baseball\/2025\/10\/30\/tony-vitello-introduced-as-san-francisco-giants-baseball-manager-mlb\/86988325007\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tony Vitello<\/a>. The Giants defeated Seattle, 10-5, at Peoria Stadium in Peoria, Arizona. Two former Vols appeared in the contest for their former head coach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><a href=\"http:\/\/volswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/college\/volunteers\/baseball\/2025\/08\/09\/drew-gilbert-makes-mlb-debut-with-san-francisco-giants-baseball\/85588566007\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Drew Gilbert<\/a> served as a pinch hitter and went 1-for-2. He recorded one RBI and one run as a designated hitter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><a href=\"http:\/\/volswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/college\/volunteers\/baseball\/2025\/05\/04\/pitcher-blade-tidwell-makes-mlb-debut-for-new-york-mets-baseball\/83446363007\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Blade Tidwell<\/a> pitched one inning in relief, totaling three strikeouts and 25 pitches (13 strikes) against four batters. He allowed one walk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Giants and Vitello will have their first home spring training game on Sunday. San Francisco will face the Cubs at Scottsdale Stadium in Scottsdale, Arizona. First pitch is slated for 3:05 p.m. EST.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Vitello served as Tennessee&#8217;s head coach from 2018-25 and compiled a 341\u2013131 (125\u201385 SEC) record.<\/p>\n<p>Need a news break? <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":body nav (play)|e|auto spike click:5|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_sp_a\" href=\"https:\/\/play.usatoday.com\/?itm_source=SPIKE&amp;itm_campaign=PLAYSPIKE&amp;itm_medium=ONSITE\">Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">He guided the Vols to a 2024 national championship, two SEC Tournament titles (2022, 2024), two SEC regular season championships (2022, 2024) and three College World Series appearances (2021, 2023-24).<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Gilbert played for the Vols from 2020-22, while Tidwell was at Tennessee from 2021-22.<\/p>\n<p>More: <a href=\"http:\/\/volswire.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/college\/volunteers\/baseball\/2025\/10\/26\/tony-vitello-joins-dick-howser-to-leave-college-baseball-for-mlb-manager-job\/86918785007\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" data-t-l=\":b|e|spike click:8|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_sp_a\">Tony Vitello joins Dick Howser in going directly from college baseball to MLB<\/a><a class=\"gnt_em gnt_em_gl gnt_em__el\" href=\"http:\/\/volswire.usatoday.com\/picture-gallery\/sports\/college\/volunteers\/baseball\/2025\/04\/06\/photos-tennessee-vols-baseball-in-mlb-during-tony-vitello-era\/82963281007\/\" data-t-l=\"\u2691g:l|l|c|view gallery:inline promo\" aria-label=\"View Gallery - Photos of Tennessee baseball players in MLB during Tony Vitello era\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img class=\"gnt_em_gl_i\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/82963448007-usatsi-14957519.jpg\" data-gl- decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" width=\"660\" height=\"372\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Follow Vols Wire on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/VolsWire\/\" data-t-l=\":b|z|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/VolsWire\" data-t-l=\":b|z|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow\">X<\/a>\u00a0(formerly Twitter).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb. 22, 2026, 9:48 a.m. ET San Francisco opened spring training under first-year manager Tony Vitello. The Giants&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[243,101,103,102,104,106,105,14986,14987,5976,1350,22201,13589,508,13588,5728,9203,377,14988,255,246],"class_list":{"0":"post-188922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-accessfree","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","15":"tag-sstssportscollegevolunteersbaseball","16":"tag-sstsnbaseball","17":"tag-tagbaseball","18":"tag-tagcollege-sports","19":"tag-tagfacebook","20":"tag-tagncaa-southeastern-conference","21":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","22":"tag-tagsan-francisco-giants","23":"tag-tagsec-hub","24":"tag-tagsmg-timely","25":"tag-tagsports-news","26":"tag-tagtennessee-volunteers-baseball","27":"tag-tagtwitter","28":"tag-typestory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188922","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=188922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}