When the San Francisco Giants made the unprecedented decision to hire Tony Vitello as their next manager, it was understood that there would be some hiccups along the way. There’s a learning curve for every first-time manager, and that’s doubly true for one attempting the unheard-of leap from college to the Majors with nary a day spent in professional baseball.
The sales pitch with Vitello was simple enough: his personality and people skills were so dynamic that they would propel him forward even while dealing with the requisite adjustments and bumps in the road as he blazed a trail in his new role. How he would manage a big league rotation and how he would adapt to an additional 100 games on the schedule were questions waiting to be answered; how he would present himself as a personality was not.
Which made Monday’s hiccup — his first since accepting the job — quite surprising. It didn’t come from mismanaging a bullpen, or mishandling bench deployment, or, heck, whatever the 2026 equivalent of pinch-hitting Mark Mathias for Brandon Crawford is. It came from the most surprising of places: a controlled environment, with some microphones and mild-mannered reporters in his face.
Less than one week after pitchers and catchers reported, Vitello opened his Monday media scrum not by fielding questions, but by asking one: “When did you first think I was taking this job?”
It was clear that the question was meant both rhetorically and for the group at large, though he seemed to pose it specifically to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser to ensure that someone actually answered him.
After Slusser responded with “about four days before it actually happened” — a reference to reporting from The Athletic that the Giants were “closing in on” hiring the then-Tennessee manager — Vitello had successfully created his opening. Now he could say what was on his mind. “It’s funny you say that,” he smirked, despite it being obvious that it was what Slusser would say. “Because that was not reality. At all.”
Vitello, who in fairness seemed jovial as usual while engaging in a half-monologue, half-conversation about what he deemed to be inaccurate reporting, certainly aired some grievances. While clarifying that he had not accepted the job at the time of The Athletic’s reporting (which, it should be noted, is in line with said reporting) Vitello offered up an ominous and fairly cryptic set of sentences: “Somebody tweeted it out. I don’t know who told them. I wish I did. It might have changed the course of history if I’d known who did.”
As is usually the case with reporting in sports, Vitello’s primary source of ire seemed to be that he wasn’t in control of his own narrative. “I did a really damn good job at keeping that away from our team, our recruiting, and it was not a distraction,” Vitello emphasized, suggesting he had taken meetings with the Giants without letting those around his college team find out. “And then all of a sudden in the middle of practice, I see our first and third base coaches freaking out. And they freaked out on me, too. And for no reason, because at that point nothing was gonna happen. And then somebody decided it that it was gonna happen, and then the whole world starts spinning real quick and I had to address the team.”
There was a lot in Vitello’s TED Talk that was understandable, but even more that was, frankly, odd. Most notable was that he performed the cardinal sin of Spring Training managers: he made himself the story.
At a time when platitudes and superlatives are as copious as bubble gum and sunflower seeds, the story this week has become Vitello. It stood in stark contrast to the last memorable time that a Giants manager eschewed questions and instead opened his Spring Training scrum with his own thoughts. That came a whole seven years ago, when a sheepish and slightly-uncomfortable Bruce Bochy announced that the upcoming season would be his final one in a Giants jersey; and while Bochy had, indeed, made himself the story on that day, he had quite clearly and openly done so to avoid being the story in the days that would follow.
That was not the case for Vitello who, four months after the offending action, opened a can of worms for seemingly no purpose at all. A point that could have been made at his introductory press conference, or during one of his many winter interviews, or, better yet, not at all, is now dominating the black and orange airwaves. At a time when we’re usually serving up best shape of his life clichés and excitedly discussing the battles for eighth reliever and fifth outfielder and second emergency starter, we’re instead not just talking about Vitello, but talking about a long-since buried story of his.
Vitello, like so many others in professional sports over the years, appeared upset at the media for an accurate report. His desire to control when his decisions are made public is very understandable, as is his ire at someone leaking the news prematurely. But those issues, of course, are not the fault of the journalists at The Athletic (national MLB reporters Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Ghiroli, and Giants beat reporter Andrew Baggarly). The implication with such a complaint (and sometimes it’s an outward statement, rather than an implication) is that the media should be working with the players and coaches, rather than in opposition to them.
It’s there where the funny irony of the story comes in. While it is, of course, not the media’s job to do PR for the Giants, it is, inadvertently, much of what we do, especially this time of year. Every article and soundbite about Bryce Eldridge’s rising stardom, and Hayden Birdsong’s attempt to bounce back, and Harrison Bader’s defensive wizardry, and the battle for the backup catcher position only serves — even when objective and journalistically sound — to excite a fanbase that is then even more likely to purchase tickets, buy merch, tune into a game, and heck, maybe even hop online in a fit of spontaneity and see what the flight prices to Scottsdale look like.
I had an article planned for today about Giants players. I suspect Baggarly, Slusser, and the other beat reporters on the scene at Papago did, as well. Instead, we all wrote about Vitello. The KNBR airwaves, offering Giants nuggets not just to diehard fans but, perhaps more critically, to casual ones, have been dominated with talk about Vitello. Many of the takes are absurd, but they’re out there nonetheless, causing damage where there would otherwise be excitement.
On Tuesday, Vitello fielded a question about the prior day’s scrum, and noted that he had not received any friendly feedback on his comments from the front office, despite the employment of the notoriously even-keeled trio of Bochy, Buster Posey, and Dusty Baker. It would certainly seem he was being honest there, as he somewhat doubled-down on his sentiments, saying that he was “just stating facts.” He thankfully offered a clarification on his cryptic comment: while “it might have changed the course of history” seemed to imply that Vitello may have chosen a different path had he known who leaked the story, he said on Tuesday that it “has no real impact on the opportunity that was presented, and it wouldn’t have changed what Buster and I would have agreed and joined to do.”
That probably ends the story. It’s not like Vitello committed a fireable offense or, despite what the online masses may have you believe, did something that should make you question his ability to be a good big league manager.
But it was an unforced error. The Giants have had a lot of those over the last half-decade, on and off the field. The hope was that Vitello would help them have fewer. For now, it remains exactly that: the hope.