I see a lot of people who want to fire Vitello. So I wrote a comment in reply, and now expanded it greatly here.
ogc thoughts
I’m not sure how realistic it is that these fans will get what they want. For one thing, unless he’s an unmitigated disaster, with a three year contract, he was always likely to get at least two years, if not all three. Two years aligns with the end of Posey’s contract, so that was always the most likely scenario, that he lasts at least two seasons, to get a good idea of the proof of concept.
Now some would argue that this season IS an unmitigated disaster. And I can understand that, because their record is headed for record bad franchise history. But I believe that these people don’t understand what Vitello was hired to do and what results he’s being measured against. I believe that winning isn't his first objective.
Player Development is the Overarching Goal
Vitello was hired more for his Player Development skills than his ability to manage a MLB team. This is what makes sense to me because he has no experience managing an MLB team, that is something he will need to grow into, and thus he has made mistakes, and will make more mistakes, as he learns on the job. Meanwhile, he has assembled a team of experts who will help him maximize the players on the Giants 26-man roster. And so far, the player development successes outweigh the failures.
There are many great apparent successes already. Arraez is now a great defender at 2B and looking like a great player, as defense was his huge negative before. His trade value is very high, and likely will earn him a multi-year contract, perhaps in the 9-digit range, or at least near, way beyond the $12M he got for this sesaon. In addition, Eldridge, Lee and Schmitt have broke out and looking great, though we need to see it continue to the end of the season. Furthermore, Dan Susac, a Rule 5 draftee, where most draftees get returned, was good enough (especially defensively, he's sixth among catchers despite missing so many games for injury, as well as not being the starter when Bailey was still here) for the Giants to feel comfortable trading Bailey away.
There has been also successes on the pitching side, though not as evident. Roupp appears to be doing better, per his peripherals (FIP has been in the low 3's). McDonald has been able to force his way onto the rotation, well enough to push Houser into the bullpen. Plus, Tidwell and Whisenhunt have both done well in stints. Not to be forgotten, Killian and Winn look like good future bullpen additions. Lots of interesting and significant progress.
However, Gilbert, Rodriguez, Encarnacion, and Ramos have not excelled so far this season, and neither has much of the bullpen or the bench. But he can’t make everyone a good player, and so I would focus on the overall results, which is pretty good for what I listed above.
And as much as the Giants sold this as a competitive season, when they went in with a rookie manager, who will have a learning curve, added two question mark SP to the rotation, who hopefully would repeat a good season, built a bullpen where the two most experienced and good relievers were both on the IL to start the season, and still not all here, and neither is fully back to normal, it clearly shows that they viewed 2026 as a transitional season where they hoped things went well.
And with so many question marks, it is also not surprising that they have sank so badly that it actually matters that they won’t get a Top 10 pick next season. Making memories, but many of the wrong kind of them for some, but we’ll be talking about Eldridge’s grand slam to our grandchildren, probably, and JHL’s sizzling streak of amazing .500 hitting. And maybe how great Arraez and Schmitt have been.
Eldridge Was Always the Main Objective
Most of all, helping Eldridge make the leap to the majors was his main assignment for this season, everything else was secondary. The Giants needed a great player for the future, someone to lead as well as be marketed, as this is the goal of most teams to build around.
I believe that Kyle Harrison was supposed to be part of that, but he obviously lost the confidence of Posey that he could do it here (he now says his success now is because he’s healthy now, plus a kick change, but he told Krukow last season that he didn’t need to add the pitch Krukow recommended, which showed his inability to change while with the Giants, despite it being clear that he needed another good pitch, and he had only the one elite fastball; sometimes a player needs a kick in the pants, in his case, twice, to make the changes necessary) and why he got traded. And which made developing Eldridge all the more critical to Posey, as the team can’t take off until they find The Guy.
And that’s Vitello’s forte, he has developed a ton of players, enough to take a mediocre college program (which had no advantages of name, history, location, or finances) and transformed it to not only be competitive immediately, but they have been battling for the College World Series for multiple years now, and won it once already, under his leadership. So if there was anything that would get Vitello fired for in his first season, it would be screwing up Eldridge’s development so badly that he’s lost his confidence and isn’t hitting well anymore.
Obviously, the results have been outstanding so far. As I have been chronicling here, Eldridge wasn’t ready when he came up, but clearly was too good to keep in the minors, and so it was like a lab experiment where they let him try a few games, work on something for a few games, and repeat that cycle until hopefully he figures it out. As I showed, it only took two breaks for him to start being good enough not to strike out too much, and now he has been one of the best hitters in the majors for the past 26 games.
Vitello has clearly been successful so far with Eldridge, but there’s still a lot of season left to play. Barring a major injury, though, Eldridge looks like a player development success and likely secured Vitello’s second season as the Giants manager, which would be to the consternation of some Giants fans.
But the Giants are used to that, many fans wanted Sabean fired as early as 2007, and it was a pretty overwhelming majority by the time 2010 came along, enough that when I suggested that fans should thank Sabean for getting us back into the World Series, many got angry. And most still didn’t believe after they won in 2010, it took 2012 to convert many of them, 2014 to shut up all of them, but even then, I saw some who had to complain about Sabean during Zaidi’s tenure, I guess 3 in 5 doesn’t buy much anymore. I will be forever grateful, though.
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