Giants Bulletin: What does Tony Vitello need to prove beyond disastrous 2026?

By Jack Loder

Roughly 11 months ago, the Giants fired Bob Melvin just a few months after publicly showing faith in him with a mid-season contract extension. The author of the extension then became Melvin’s executioner after a dreadful second half marred by sloppy baseball culminated with a bland 81-81 mark. By relieving Melvin of his duties, franchise legend Buster Posey sent a profound message. Mediocrity and embarrassing sloppy baseball won’t cut it. It was a harsh but strong message. One that fans welcomed and lauded as a Posey standard that would reflect his Hall of Fame, championship winning playing days. At least that’s what the blueprints meant to illustrate. 

Fast forward nearly a year and the 2026 Giants are worse than the 2025 version in nearly every facet of the game. Posey’s daring unprecedented hire of Tony Vitello has at best shown to not be a positive catalyst, and at worst has been an abject failure. Just last week, Posey told the San Francisco Standard in no uncertain terms that Vitello will be back in 2027. 

This move makes sense in the now. When the Giants hired Vitello away from Tennessee in October, they inked him to a three-year deal and his removal after one bad season couldn’t possibly come without a full cleaning of house in the front office. For better or worse, Posey has largely tied his fate as an executive to Tony Vitello. It’s difficult to list Vitello as even a top three reason the Giants are one of baseball’s worst teams. Underperforming veterans and an awfully constructed bullpen come to mind to start. 

But he is the manager, and any good one would say anything that happens on the field is under his accountability. Hopefully in his second season, he feels as though he can be more of himself, more of the manager that crowd surfed in Omaha after winning the 2024 national championship. A huge swath of the Giants fan base still has faith in Vitello, and that’s reasonable. But when the dust settles on this disastrous campaign, it’s also more than fair to believe Vitello has yet to prove anything at this level, and that any benefit of the doubt should be left with the carcass of 2026. 

On Sunday afternoon, Vitello seemed to show flashes of the Tennessee Tony that fans of his hire have so desperately yearned for throughout the season. He walked into his postgame press conference nearly 20 minutes later than usual, sporting a scowl. Beads of sweat accumulated on his forehead and upper lip, visible to reporters as he settled into his seat and glanced at the ugly stat sheet before clearing his throat into the microphone. 

“People paid money to sit through that,” Vitello said bluntly. “That didn’t look like a major league game that looked like a Junior College game. And I was a JuCo guy so I don’t mean that disrespectfully.”

Vitello has been extremely deferential to veterans and senior staff members this season, an approach that is understandable considering his lack of professional experience. But it seems as though the first year skipper is nearing a breaking point. After Friday night’s loss to Colorado, Vitello called out his team for the elementary shortcoming of not throwing to the right base. Then Sunday he held a fire and brimstone team meeting that featured what players called a need for conviction. 

The criticism of Sunday’s embarrassment wasn’t just internal. Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper didn’t hold back when they joined the KNBR morning show on Monday and Tuesday.