There is no other way to describe the 40th manager in the history of the San Francisco Giants besides unprecedented.
Never before has a coach gone directly from the college ranks to the major leagues with no prior experience, but Tony Vitello will do exactly that when he is introduced as the Giants’ next manager at Oracle Park next Thursday. The club announced the groundbreaking hire Wednesday, three weeks after president of baseball operations Buster Posey decided to fire Bob Melvin.
At the time, Posey said the Giants were seeking “a different voice” to go in a “different direction,” and did they ever.
Whereas Melvin was a milquetoast mainstay with two decades of experience as a major-league manager, Vitello arrives as a 47-year-old firebrand who neither played nor coached at any level of professional baseball. What he has done is transform a once-downtrodden college program into perennial winners — and looked cool doing it.
Whether that translates to the big leagues remains to be seen, but Vitello has gotten plenty of votes of confidence from those who know him.
“He makes you want to go to the field everyday,” said Blake Burke, the Oakland-born first baseman on Vitello’s 2024 title team at Tennessee. “You go there, and you have fun. There’s just something in the air when you go to the field. The culture is great.”
Burke, a De La Salle graduate who just completed his first pro season in the Milwaukee Brewers organization said he was “surprised” to see the news. Not because of its never-before-seen nature or that the Giants offered him the job — but that he left.
“I don’t know how it’s going to translate and all that,” he said. “But whatever he’s done, he’s been successful doing it. … He’s a great guy off the field and a competitor on the field. I feel like that’s exactly what you want out of your coach.”
Another Division I college coach whose team played against the Volunteers and knows people around the program said he believed Vitello was fit make the jump because “as a relentless competitor and elite recruiter, he knows how to identify talent and bring out the best in people.”
Max Scherzer, who could be a free-agent target this offseason, was at Missouri when Vitello was the pitching coach and developed a lasting bond.
“I absolutely believe in him,” he told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. “He’s to this day one of my closest friends and I absolutely believe he’s gonna get it done at the big league level.”
The decision will define Posey’s era atop the baseball side of the organization, just as the less-out-of-the-box hire of Gabe Kapler did for Farhan Zaidi before him. So, before Vitello dons the Giants jersey for the first time next week, it’s worth exploring how he got here, what drives him and why he is the candidate Posey landed on to lead his version of the San Francisco Giants.
He turned around Tennessee
The Giants and Volunteers share more than the color orange.
When Vitello took over the Tennessee program in 2017, it had been more than a decade since its last College World Series appearance. Likewise, the Giants have been mired in mediocrity, finishing around .500 and missing the playoffs the past four seasons.
Vitello transformed Tennessee into an SEC powerhouse. They returned to the NCAA tournament in 2019, made it back to Omaha in 2021 and won it all in 2024. In eight seasons in Knoxville, Vitello accumulated a record of 341-131, a .722 winning percentage.
Now, the Giants will ask him to do the same — only in the big leagues.
‘He could talk, for sure’
According to multiple reports, Vitello blew Posey away during the interview process.
He showed off the same personality that he put to use on the recruiting trail, pulling in the top-ranked classes in the nation the past two seasons, according to Perfect Game. That’s one area exclusive to college baseball, and the Giants’ roster already has a strong foundation.
Still, the team hasn’t quite shaken the narrative that it struggles to sell San Francisco as a destination for marquee free agents. Vitello will have to change up his pitch a little (darken the shade of orange on the slide deck, at least), but maybe those skills translate to free agency meetings.
When the Volunteers would hit a skid, Vitello was the type of manager who would “try everything,” Burke said. He didn’t hesitate to call team meetings and address the clubhouse. Often, it was convincing stuff.
“He could talk, for sure,” Burke said. “He’s really good with words. … He’s just a great leader, a great people’s coach. He connected well with people and just created a good culture.”
‘He’s just a great players’ coach’
The culture at Tennessee established under Vitello became stuff of legend, or infamy, depending on your perspective.
When the Vols climbed to the top of the polls for the first time in 2022, it prompted an ESPN profile that called them “bold, brash and on top of the college baseball world.” The story described their “fiery flair,” ranging from players donning a pink “Daddy” cap and a mink coat after home runs to a full-on kneeling celebrations upon reaching second or third base, that “endeared itself to the orange-blooded Vols’ fans but rubbed plenty of rival fans, teams and coaches wrong.”
If that sounds at all like a newcomer to the Giants’ dugout late last season, well, he was quoted in the piece.
“Whether you like us or not, we don’t really care,” outfielder Drew Gilbert said. “You don’t like us … well, all right, we’re still going to roll the way we roll.”
Gilbert, who quickly endeared himself to the San Francisco fanbase with the same frenetic energy he played with at Tennessee, has been credited with being almost as central to the culture shift in Knoxville as Vitello, and now both will bring that to the Giants’ dugout.
They won’t be alone for long. The Giants acquired Gilbert’s teammate at Tennessee, right-hander Blake Tidwell, in the same trade that brought him to San Francisco, and they spent their first-round pick in this past draft on another Vitello disciple, infielder Gavin Kilen.
Vitello himself was suspended four games by the NCAA for chest-bumping an umpire during an argument in 2022.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all of the college antics are coming to the typically more-reserved major-league dugout. Describing Vitello as “just a great players’ coach,” Burke said, “He wants you to play your game, he wants you to be you.
“He never, like, went out of his way to be like, ‘Do these celebrations.’ He was always just like, ‘Go out there and be you. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of winning, you guys can have fun doing it.’”
He’s not the first coach in his family
Vitello’s career got its start not far from Oracle Park, at least compared to Knoxville, as the associate head coach for the Salinas Packers of the California Collegiate League before winding its way through the southeast, with stops on the staffs of Missouri (his alma mater), TCU and Arkansas before arriving at Tennessee.
His life’s path, however, began at an earlier age, on the sidelines and in the dugouts of his father’s soccer and baseball games. Greg Vitello coached at De Smet High School, outside St. Louis, for 46 years and is a member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.
“It all came from my dad,” Vitello recently told the Youth Inc. podcast.
Vitello described his dad as a “disciplinarian,” but he takes a different tact in his approach. He pointed to Joe Maddon as a contemporary influence, telling the podcast, “(he) really unlocked the ability for a lot of those guys be true to who they are as individuals,” on the Cubs’ 2016 World Series team.
“There’s a lot of downtime in baseball, so personality shouldn’t just be encouraged — it’s kind of a requirement,” Vitello said. “There’s only 20 to 35 minutes of actual action that go on in the game, but the game could last three hours. So that time in the dugout, that time pregame, spitting seeds, the conversations that take place postgame, those are so crucial. … If you’re gonna have all that downtime, and personality is a key ingredient, (then) everybody should be very comfortable in their own skin.”