Buster Posey isn’t sounding like a man ready to make a change in the Giants’ dugout.
With the SF Giants stumbling through a rough season, first-year manager Tony Vitello has naturally landed under the microscope. But when Posey was asked on KNBR to assess Vitello’s work, the president of baseball operations didn’t sound like someone questioning his manager’s future.
“My frank evaluation is Tony and his staff are doing a really good job… I get to see their interaction. I get to see their work.
I get to see them trying to solve this puzzle that we’re in right now. So I think Tony and his staff are doing a great job.”
That answer may not satisfy plenty of fans, but it does tell you where the organization appears to stand right now. Unless the Giants completely collapse the rest of the way and Vitello clearly loses the clubhouse, it’s hard to see the team moving on after one season. At minimum, he seems likely to get another year.
Posey’s own history only sharpens that point. He already fired Bob Melvin after picking up the option on his contract last year, so if he were to praise Vitello publicly and then dump him a few months later, it would raise obvious questions about the stability of the organization. That kind of whiplash wouldn’t exactly make the job look appealing to the next candidate.
None of that means Vitello has been blameless.
The Giants have looked unprepared too often, and the little things have been a problem all season. Mental mistakes have piled up on defense and on the bases, with runners getting picked off easily and Giants baserunners forgetting how many outs there were. That’s the kind of sloppiness that sticks out fast.
Posey said he wanted a detail-oriented staff, and maybe that work is happening behind the scenes. But what matters is what shows up on the field, and the Giants have not consistently looked sharp. At the big-league level, fundamentals can’t be an afterthought.
Maybe Vitello feels he has to earn the authority to hammer those details after coming straight from the college ranks. Either way, it’s on him to have the team ready, and that hasn’t always been the case.
The front office still carries the biggest share of the blame for the season because the Giants didn’t add enough pitching to be competitive. Even so, the coaching staff has not escaped criticism. Posey may be publicly backing Vitello for now, but the Giants need real improvement on the field if that optimism is going to hold up with the fan base.
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