By Jack Loder
It’s not often that a mid-February dugout media scrum generates eyebrow-raising quotes, especially from a first year manager still feeling out his club and the reporters who cover it so closely. But that has become the case on Monday, after new Giants’ skipper Tony Vitello opened his daily session with media with a role reversal of sorts.
“Question for you guys,” he prefaced, turning towards the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser before continuing with an inquiry to the whole group. “When did you first think I was taking this job?”
He was met with a brief silence. “Yeah, it was about four days before it actually happened,” Slusser replied, speaking for the group. Vitello initially replied with a trivial dispute of the timeline. “It’s funny you say that, because that was not reality, at all.”
That was the beginning of a bizarre, unprompted, and frankly unnecessary three minute tangent in which he recalled his emotional last few days in Knoxville. He seemed frustrated, like maybe a recent conversation with a (capital V) Volunteer had gone poorly, and some grievances about his departure were aired. If that’s the case, a major league manager who’s hardly a stranger to media has to know it’s not the time or the place to re-hash a four month old saga. Especially not when none of us know who’s going to be closing games for his team in five weeks.
To say the tangent lacked feel would be an understatement. Vitello calmly unearthed buried bones, vaguely criticizing premature reports of his departure, and referencing that reports may have accelerated the decision process.
“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 knew who did.”
Huh?
Before the 2026 Giants have even taken the field for an exhibition game, their rookie manager has created a distraction. One that raises a multitude of concerns.
Why, four months after taking the job and in the current midst of captaining his first professional camp, is Vitello so entrenched in the events of his departure from Tennessee that he brings it up unprompted to a gaggle of microphones and notebooks?
Why did he feel the need to recount the impacts of his decision on his former coaching staff, on recruiting, and how he “hopes they love their coaches… they’re gonna be just fine’?
Why did he include a thinly veiled suggestion that things may have gone differently had information not been leaked before a decision had been made. Did information becoming public push him towards the Giants?
This can be painted in no positive way for the Giants, who are five weeks out from beginning a pivotal campaign in a division that houses the two time defending World champions, and another pair of teams that have had much more success than San Francisco in the last four seasons. The new manager might be losing sleep over how things ended with his ex, rather than losing sleep over how a paper thin bullpen is going to hold leads for his big league club. Vitello’s concern, etched so clearly on his face on Monday, should be with a top heavy starting rotation, or the development of the organization’s best prospect in 20 years. Instead, it’s on “therapy if you will, from walking out of there.”
Yes, Tennessee and college baseball are Vitello’s only reference points. It’s understandable to think he’ll lean on that experience, and reference his former program from time to time. It was already becoming a bit much, and after Monday’s awkward recollection and its public reception, fans of one of the most storied organizations in the history of baseball are just about done hearing about how tough it was to leave the University of Tennessee.
