Why Tony Vitello Could Be the Giants’ Next Game-Changing Manager

The San Francisco Giants hiring a manager like Tony Vitello, whom they are said to be pursuing, comes with some risks.

The head coach at the University of Tennessee since 2018, Vitello has never managed, coached or even played at the professional level, majors or minors. He would be the first manager in major league history to make such a jump. Vitello having done all of those things -- play, coach and manage as a professional -- no doubt would inform him on his first day as Giants manager. It's not ideal Vitello hasn't ridden with the boys on the buses over the back roads to bush league games.

But it's not everything, and Giants general manager Buster Posey knows it.

Here's what Vitello has done: develop major league ballplayers. That's a quality major league teams want in a manager these days, and it's what they should want. Development used to be seen as a domain mostly for the minor leagues, but it's short-sighted to assume that developing players stops once they reach the majors. A lot of times, it does. But it shouldn't have to.

Vitello has excelled in development, with his Tennessee bio stating: "During a full-time, Division I coaching career spanning 22 years, Vitello has signed and developed 16 first-round MLB Draft picks and a handful of players who have gone on to play in Major League Baseball." The names from Tennessee include Garrett Crochet, Ben Joyce, Jordan Beck, Chase Hollander and Christian Moore. MLB teams have drafted 41 players from Tennessee since 2021, more than any other spot.

Other notable MLB ballplayers Vitello has recruited and coached, as an assistant at Arkansas and Missouri, include Brandon Finnegan, Andrew Benintendi, Ian Kinsler and Max Scherzer. Scherzer, a three-time Cy Young winner and probable Hall of Famer once he retires, said in a 2022 interview with SNY that Vitello helped him use his own well-known intensity to an advantage.

"Tony brought out an even more competitive side in me," Scherzer says. "Same for that group of pitchers there at the time. Their intensity rubbed off on me. They challenged me to be better, to be more aggressive. Missouri was really ground zero for me becoming a big league pitcher, growing into more than just a thrower."

He might not have been at the professional level yet, but Vitello has an extensive background of identifying, evaluating and developing big-league talent. He just didn't happen to be at the professional level (yet) while coaching and managing these players. And it's not like Vitello just used the job at Tennessee to pass the players ahead to the next level. He's also gotten results as a manager, winning the NCAA championship in 2024, making three Men's College World Series since 2021, and six regionals overall. Tennessee has become a national power, accomplishing things it never had done before in baseball.

Maybe in another era, a person with Vitello's skill set would have been on an executive track, but Posey doesn't need a GM -- that's what he does. No matter, if Vitello can think like a GM and still function as a manager, the Giants could get more from the dugout than most teams.

Vitello is likely to find pockets of resistance at first, beyond media types and fans uncertain about his bona fides as a skipper. At the next level, Vitello also will run into a ballplayer or two unimpressed that the manager wasn't good enough to play professionally. It might even bug one of his players that Vitello himself didn't reach the majors as a player. That's their problem. Not having played in the majors, long ago, proved to be no big deal in itself. 

Going back to the 1930s and '40s, Joe McCarthy won seven World Series managing the New York Yankees. He never made it past the minor leagues as a player. Earl Weaver didn't play in the majors and won four pennants and a World Series with the Baltimore Orioles. Jim Leyland, Jack McKeon, Joe Maddon, Brian Snitker -- they all won World Series rings as managers without having played in the majors, too. Several of these guys are in the Hall of Fame.

There are lots of reasons to think that, say, Albert Pujols would be a good manager in the majors. He is said to be a candidate at multiple places, from the Angels to the Orioles. It's true that Pujols has been preparing to manage the Dominican Republic team for the World Baseball Classic, and he's done a little here and there as a special assistant and part-time coach at the major league level. But envisioning Pujols as a big-league manager requires some faith, too. Vitello has proved he can do a lot that Pujols has yet to try. That doesn't disqualify either of them.

As for comparing managers as players, nobody cares about how a manager's playing career stacks up as long as they're a good manager, or as long as they just happen to win. Look at the managers of the recent World Series winners and their own playing careers. Dave Roberts with the Dodgers: solid player in the majors, basically a fourth outfielder. Bruce Bochy with the Rangers: a backup catcher. Dusty Baker with the Astros: a two-time All-Star. Snitker with the Braves: played six games at Triple-A.

All kinds can manage a major league team. History has been proving it since Frank Selee (look him up). Posey and the Giants appear on the verge of finding an intriguing manager by looking outside of the box. But not that outside.