There’s not much left for the San Francisco Giants in 2026, but this final stretch still matters for Tony Vitello.
At 55-79 and 25 games back of the World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West, the Giants are simply playing out the string. The season is gone.
The pressure that normally comes with every lineup card and every late-game decision isn’t there anymore. That’s the one thing Vitello can use now.
September gives him a chance to look at young players without the entire month being filtered through a postseason chase. That matters, because the roster he’s working with looks nothing like the veteran-heavy group he was expected to manage when he arrived.
Matt Chapman is out for the season. Willy Adames is on the sidelines with an elbow injury, and Casey Schmitt hasn’t played since July after knee surgery.
That has opened the door for a long list of auditions, starting with Bryce Eldridge and Drew Gilbert.
Eldridge has already gotten a real look, logging 314 at-bats in 88 games. He’s hitting .252/.344/.436 with 14 home runs and 36 RBI, along with 96 strikeouts and 45 walks.
He’s not finished, and that’s exactly the point. Vitello now gets to see how he handles adversity, how he adjusts to MLB pitching and how he performs with steady playing time.
Gilbert’s run has been even longer. In 109 games, he’s batting .243/.324/.392 with eight home runs, 36 RBI and 29 walks. He, too, is still a work in progress, and this month gives Vitello a better sense of what he is when the reps keep coming.
The evaluations don’t stop there.
Jonah Cox has flashed in a small sample, hitting three home runs in 54 at-bats. The 24-year-old is batting .278 and has also added two triples and five stolen bases. His .537 slugging percentage and .841 OPS jump off the page, even if it’s still too early to draw big conclusions.
Turner Hill has also made the most of his chance. He’s 8-for-26 in 10 games, with four doubles and four RBI while slashing .308/.387/.462.
Not every audition has gone as cleanly.
Christian Koss is batting .207 with a .506 OPS in 43 games. Nate Furman has just one hit in 13 at-bats. Shay Whitcomb has managed only 14 at-bats since joining the Giants.
That’s the reality of September for this club: some players will use it to push themselves into the future, and some won’t.
Vitello was hired to win, and that hasn’t happened. Nothing in the next 28 games changes that.
But success can still mean something different now. For Eldridge and Gilbert, it’s about becoming part of the next competitive Giants roster.
For the rest, it’s about forcing their way into the conversation.
And for Vitello, the job is to figure out who he can trust.
There are roster holes everywhere, and there are hard decisions coming. He’s got about a month to sort out which players are worth betting on.
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Duane Kuiper is expected to have major say in who gets that job, which makes this more than a standard broadcast hire for NBC Sports Bay Area. The decision should come down to the networks direction and Kuipers preference, and that kind of arrangement gives the longtime Giants voice unusual influence over how the booth sounds after Krukow steps away. [Read more 🡒]
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The split between Oracle Park and the road has only sharpened the debate, because Devers has been noticeably better at home since the trade. Then came the strange scene of a recent game getting canceled after he had already crushed a two-run homer, an odd twist that somehow made a night built around his bat end with the kind of result nobody in the ballpark would have expected. For Giants fans, it is the sort of early chapter that feels both promising and unfinished. [Read more 🡒]
Giants Fans Are Starting To Wonder What Comes Next For Tony Vitello
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For Giants fans, the bigger issue is what kind of support hell have if he gets another season to work with. The article points to the teams recent trades and the state of its prospect base as the backdrop for whatever comes next, which makes this more than just a manager watch. If Vitello is staying, the front offices next moves matter just as much, because the shape of the roster will determine whether this first MLB managerial run becomes a reset or just another chapter in a frustrating stretch. [Read more 🡒]