By Brian Murphy
Man. You have to feel a little something for Tony Vitello, manager of the San Francisco Giants.
He’s been a skipper in The Show for 56 games, and it’s been a — how can we put this? — awful ride so far.
His team is 22-34. His team’s fans are as mad as anyone can remember. His team has heard boos at home, a rare sound in loyal San Francisco. His team looks really, really bad at times — forgetting outs, forgetting gloves, getting terrible advice rounding third base.
There are very few baseball fans who would watch the 2026 Giants and think: “Now there’s a crisp baseball team that came to win today.”
And yet — you have to feel a little something for Tony V.
He was offered the job of a lifetime and accepted it. He left the University of Tennessee, where he was regarded as a combination of celebrity and deity, for the ultimate baseball challenge. He was gifted the keys to the manager’s office in a baseball-mad town with the prettiest park in baseball, a job Bruce Bochy once said is the best in the game.
Vitello arrived in The City and:
— His huge-contract stars are underperforming wildly.
— Four of the five starting pitchers in the Opening Day rotation have a negative WAR.
— His front office handed him a roster with no back end of the bullpen.
— His front office also gifted him a third base coach whose inexperience has cost the Giants games.
Sort of makes the views of the Golden Gate Bridge from Crissy Field a little less pretty.
So what has Tony V’s sin actually been here?
Sure, he’s made mistakes. Going to Ryan Walker in some key situations backfired. His lineup cards without Bryce Eldridge have drawn criticism. The team has not come from behind when trailing after six innings, a somewhat-alarming sign of a lack of grit.
He’s not without some of the blame in the pie chart of Giants misery.
But he’s also learning on the job, something we all should have known and remembered from the day he was hired.
When Marty Lurie told us in Scottsdale “He’s not going to be Bobby Cox in a week, he’s not going to be Bruce Bochy in two weeks”, the man they call ‘Baseball Mensch’ was on point. If and when Tony V becomes a good big-league manager, it may take a full year of adjustments. Whether or not the Giants have the patience for a full year of adjustments — both in the dugout and on the diamond — may be a topic for another Jock Blog.
We had Tony V on the show Thursday morning, and I sensed that he still hasn’t put his full stamp on his big league club, that he may be understandably deferring to the culture of a clubhouse in The Show. This fact would be what critics would point to when they advise against hiring a college coach with no pro experience, and they may ultimately be correct.
This whole year may turn out to be a wash, and challenge Posey to find a way forward given the contracts handcuffing the future.
As of now, the Jock Blog is of the opinion that if you made the revolutionary hire of a college coach who needs time, you’ve got to give him that time. Brian Sabean came on our show and urged the fans to be patient with Tony V, to “give the young man three years”. Giants fans right now aren’t sure they want to give this team three more innings of their attention, but you get the point.
I won’t rule out revisiting this topic if things go off the rails. But nobody wants things to go off the rails. We want crisp baseball, a team pulling on the same rope and Tony V to bring that trademark energy we were sold. He hasn’t shown it thus far. Seems like he’s still a little tentative. You have to feel for the guy a little bit.
