Your 2026 Giants New Manager: Tony Vitello

As has been announced for a while, the long time ultra successful University of Tennessee head coach, who led his team to multiple College World Series, and won one in 2024, Tony Vitello, was hired to be the Giants 40th manager in franchise history.  He gets a three year contract, with a vesting option (conditions unknown, but likely wins) for a fourth year, making $3.5M per year.  Which is not much more than his current contract with UT. 

Here are some informative articles and videos about the Giants new manager:

• The Athletic Andy Baggarly: Closing in on Vitello, Pursuit of Vitello meaning, Vitello Timeline (subscription required; but you get Andy Baggarly, who broke the story and had been hinting at the connection for a while now, and is a great storyteller and writer, he’s why I subscribe)
• SF Standard John Shea:  YouTube video (Kerry Crowley and John Shea), Posey Hires Vitello (Subscription required)
• NBC Bay Area Sports Alex Pavlovic:  Vitello Hired YouTube, Vitello Hired, Max Scherzer on why Vitello works, Vitello contract, Vitello shares selfish reason to join Giants
• Baseball America:  Vitello Makes Perfect Sense
• MLB.com:  What Vitello MLB players say about him
• KNBR:  Interview with Vitello after Kilen drafted
• The TK Show:  Dave Fleming discusses Vitello hire, quotes people who know him
• Youth Inc:  Vitello YouTube Interview: Building Winners 
• Yahoo Sports:  Five Facts about Vitello 
• Knoxville News:  Vitello’s Approach to Baseball

ogc thoughts 

As all of the articles and talking heads noted, this is an unprecedented move, hiring someone with zero pro experience, which has never been done before in baseball.  Much like how Buster Posey’s hiring was an unprecedented move, hiring someone with no executive experience.  

Risks Involved

Most of the articles focuses on the huge risk of taking on someone who has no pro experience, either playing or coaching or managing, especially no MLB experience of any kind.  But few go to any lengths about why he is an inspired hire.  I get that there are differences, but they are not all unsolvable. 

With an experienced coaching staff, especially if they retain JP Martinez, which I expect, he will have a ton of help (along with the analytics department) regarding pitching usage. He was also a pitching coach before, so I would expect him to be more attuned to when pitchers are losing it, in game and in season, pro or no pro. 

Wood bats have been mentioned often, but that affects the batters, not how he manages, right?!? This one really puzzled me, I see this mentioned a bunch of times. The bat won’t affect managing other than there is less offense, 

And I’m not saying that he will necessarily be successful, but in my mind, the differences are not as stark as most commentary makes it. Baseball is baseball, for the most part, it’s the players who are different. 

Managing very rich men vs rich young men is different, but if he’s as good a communicator as Scherzer and Griffin say he is, it’s just about having a different conversation, taking that into consideration. And I assume Posey is cognizant of such land mines, and prepping Vitello as he sees the need. 

Also, all the interviews I have read notes how accepting he is of a wide spectrum of personalities in college. So I get that extremely rich adult men are different, but young men also have a spectrum of types, which I think are wider than the old vs young differences, if anything, one would hope that the older players are more mature and stable than young teenagers, and thus easier in that way.

His Players’ Comments 

The MLB article linked above covers a lot of interviews, it was the most interesting one of the bunch, in terms of covering areas not covered by others.  The descriptions covers areas that Posey has stated about the Giants or should want for the Giants:  pitching (him being a pitching coach before), fundamentals, players’ manager, leader, loyal, winner, attuned to details, hard working, communicator, he invests in and develops every player, drawing the best out of them. 

Initial Thoughts

I loved his initial statement in his meeting with Tennessee media a few days after he accepted the job:  "By now, you all know I officially accepted a position to babysit Drew Gilbert.”  That’s a great sense of humor, and should bring some life to interviews with the Giants manager, whereas Melvin was very bland and lifeless. That should also ingratiate himself with the players. 

People harp on his lack of pro experience, but I think people overlook the importance of managerial experience, leading a team, as he has done, very successfully.  Whereas, how many times have we seen guys hired with no managerial experience and they don’t know how to manage the team. Especially star players like Ted Williams or Matt Williams.

I think a number of factors appealed to Buster to make this hire.  Most of all, his great success in leading his team to the College World Series in three of four seasons.  He rebuilt the UT program from a moribund also ran in four seasons to reaching the CWS in his final four seasons with them, eight total. 

And you don’t do that simply from recruitment, especially when taking over a bad team.  You most importantly need to identify talent.  Plus you also need to be able to project what a prospective player can do with further development from his organization.  You also need to motivate them, both to do what they need to do to develop, but also to do what’s best for the team.  And you need to be able to sell them on your vision, and get buy in on everything.

People are worried about how he will interact with the older players. For the most part, the oldest players are the highest paid players and/or leaders of the team, Chapman, Adames, Devers, Webb, Ray. I think that they respect Posey enough that they will roll with any obstacles initially, working with Posey as facilitator as necessary, but given that Vitello's communication skills are considered to be excellent, he should be able to work easily with them, as none of them are prima donnas or difficult personalities. Nor will he need to motivate them to do anything, they are pretty much self sustaining and not needing much more than managerial pats on the back.

The rest of the roster looks to be all young players who aren’t even arbitration eligible yet. And, reading that article above from Knoxville, I got the feeling that he can identify with most of the players on the team, struggling to keep their spot on the team, desperate to figure out and solve each problem area.  Basically teaching players to not think about things, to do what they do with conviction.  

Makes Perfect Sense

Honestly, I was mostly on the fence while writing this blog post, though leaning towards this being a good move, until I searched for articles on how Vitello handled pitchers, and found the Baseball America article, from which I took their headline.  He does make perfect sense, based on what they noted about him.

From the moment he arrived in Knoxville in the summer of 2017, Vitello began building Tennessee as if it were a major league organization disguised as a college program. His first step was assembling a staff fluent in analytics and data—long before that became standard across the college game. Tennessee’s recruiting classes were sculpted with information and precision, and the results spoke for themselves: high-round draft picks, immediate contributors and a roster that played with the polish of a professional system.

Ironically, he's a deep analytics manager, which Zaidi would have loved. who knows how to translate that into effective baseball language that ballplayers can understand, appreciate, and execute.  And the Giants roster is filled with players who need that extra bit of training to make the leap from okay (or non) major leaguer to a good MLB player: Ramos, Lee, Matos, Luciano, Gilbert, McCray, Schmitt, Koss, Fitzgerald, Birdsong, Beck, Winn, Teng, Whisenhunt, Black, and especially Eldridge.

Of course, he's not a magician who can turn them all into good players, but even a 10% success rate would yield a couple of good to great players, and add to the extra 5-10 wins necessary to get the Giants playoff competitive, which has been the focus of my posts about the 2026 Giants.  And it wasn't all analytics or talent, it was belief:

During his rise to success, Vitello’s rosters weren’t just talented, they were balanced, modern, built through every avenue available. From prep recruits and portal transfers to returning veterans who believed in his vision, Vitello gathered like minds and talented players. That blend became his blueprint, proof that Tennessee’s rise wasn’t accidental or cyclical. It was structural.

At the American Baseball Coaches Association convention this January, Vitello addressed a packed ballroom of coaches from every level of the game. He told them Tennessee’s transformation wasn’t just about better players or sharper data—it was about belief. Buy-in, he said, grew slowly and deliberately, first from his staff, then from his players and then from an entire community. Anyone who’s been around Tennessee knows who set that tone.

The conviction and belief could be what the young Giants roster needs:

If the fit still sounds unconventional, take a closer look at the Giants’ roster construction. 

Fifteen of the organization’s 18 draft picks in 2025 came from four-year or junior colleges. The year before, 17 of 18 did. San Francisco has spent two straight drafts mining the college ranks as aggressively as any club in baseball, valuing polish, maturity and competitive edge over projection. In other words, the very traits Vitello has spent his career developing.

That trend isn’t limited to the draft, either. Several of the Giants’ cornerstone players—and even a handful of their highest touted international signees—are still college age. It’s a roster that could skew younger over the next few years, filled with players who came up through the same environments Vitello mastered. The Giants don’t need someone to teach professionalism so much as they need someone who understands what modern player development looks like at its most efficient level. 

And Vitello is fluent in that language. 

So it's not one thing or another thing, it's the whole player development package that Tony Vitello hopefully delivers to the Giants organization.  And he's been successful beyond all expectations, taking a bottom dwelling team and transforming them into a regular CWS participant. 

MLB is Different and Yet the Same

Of course, changing a MLB roster is not as easy, he will need to work with what the Giants got, for the most part.  The good news there is the Giants have a pretty good core, with Webb, Ray, Chapman, Adames, and Devers, which should still be in their primes for the next 2-3 years (I expect the Giants to sign Ray to a multi-year extension before the 2026 season).  And I expect the Giants to sign a Top of the Rotation caliber SP in free agency. The worry is about getting buy in from the vets, but I don't see that as an issue with these veterans.

The other good news is that there is a lot of young Giants close to breaking out.  Ramos, most of all, seems to need Vitello's belief and conviction, to field okay again, and to hit more like 2024 than 2025, be more consistent.  Similarly, but closer to breaking out, Lee appears to be on the edge of breaking out.  Matos has shown he can dominate for short periods of time, maybe Vitello can unlock how he can do thatt more consistently.  Schmitt and Fitzgerald as well, with their hitting.  Koss is already great defensively, and if he can be more consistent a hitter, he would break out too.  And Eldridge looks ready for his close up, maybe Vitello can help hasten that.  

Similarly with the pitching.  Walker in 2024 is the ideal, but somehow he lost that in 2025, perhaps Vitello can help him regain that belief.  Birdsong as well.  And Teng, Whisenhunt and Black have all shown in AAA that they can pitch in the majors, maybe Vitello can help them take that extra step they need.  And perhaps help out Beck and Winn, who had success in the majors in 2023 but injuries got in the way in 2024-25, find their way back.

So, we can see how Vitello can help, and clearly what he did with players at UT worked, so the question is whether he can bring his magic to SF.  It appears doable, but, as always, the devil is in the details.

But he's got me excited, and I'm looking forward to his introductory press conference on Thursday.  I wasn't so sure about Buster Posey taking over, given his lack of executive experience, but he just keeps on knocking out of the park for the most part with the major moves that he has made.  Hiring Vitello is unprecedented, but it also makes perfect sense as well.  I can't wait for the 2026 season to start!