ARLINGTON - Tony Vitello’s first season in the Giants dugout has been rough by the numbers, and there’s no way around that. San Francisco is 48-67, sitting second-to-last in the division, and in almost any other job that kind of return would put the spotlight squarely on the manager.
Vitello, though, is exactly the kind of hire that was made to be judged over time, not on a snapshot. The former TCU assistant coach and later Tennessee head coach is in his first year as the Giants’ manager, and he represents something major-league baseball has never really tried before: a college coach with no major league experience running a big-league club.
Before the Giants faced the Texas Rangers in the second game of their three-game series in Arlington on Tuesday, Vitello talked with the Star-Telegram about the path that got him here and what this leap has felt like.
His time at TCU, he said, was foundational. Vitello described those first two years as a blur, recalling how he lived in the Residence Inn on University Avenue for his first three months while spending nearly all his time on the road recruiting. The job, he said, was about trying to get the program to the standard it needed to reach.
He also acknowledged leaving before the job was fully finished, saying the pull of the SEC was too strong to ignore. Even so, he said the experience under Jim Schlossnagle taught him plenty, especially about the broader demands of leadership and the business side of the sport.
“I see why this is called ‘a manager’ now. TCU was an education on the bigger scope of things; everything that comes with running a program, or being in this chair.”
Vitello said he did not fully grasp the potential significance of his move in the offseason, but that changed as the season approached. He became aware that his success could matter beyond San Francisco, and that created some added pressure.
As the Giants stumbled out of the gate, he found himself thinking about whether he was failing Buster Posey with the opportunity or getting in the way of veterans such as Rafael Devers and Willy Adames. He also said he knows people are watching, but insisted he is not trying to be the face of a larger movement.
“I’m not the guy to carry the flag. That’s more for (Vanderbilt’s) Tim Corbin, (Mississippi’s) Mike Bianco, or Jim Schlossnagle.”
Still, he said, he wants to do right by the college coaches who told him to keep going and keep working the way he does. In his view, more of that college approach to coaching and development should make its way into the pro game.
The adjustment to losing has been another major test. Vitello said even good teams lose, but he has not lost his distaste for it. What has changed is the way he processes it.
In college, he said, one loss could spill into everything - recruiting, the next week, even the next couple of years. In the majors, the grind is daily and constant, and if a coach does not adapt, it can swallow him whole. Looking back, he said he can laugh now at how he handled the Giants’ three straight losses to the Yankees to open the season, even if he believes some of that reaction was understandable.
“No team in the big leagues needed to get off to a good start more than the Giants. Part of that was my fault.
It was the nature of this beast. I would handle that differently now than I did then.”
He said he has begun to forgive himself a little as the season has gone on and the reps have piled up. That process has helped him worry less about blaming himself and more about understanding that the game is still a team sport, just in a different way than college baseball.
Vitello also pointed to the scale of major league operations as another major difference. In college, he said, the head coach can be responsible for nearly everything, even down to whether the hot chocolate is hot enough. At the big-league level, that simply is not how it works.
He said the state of major NCAA sports was part of the conversation when he took the job, though not the only reason. A friend told him that big names like Nick Saban, Bruce Pearl and Mike Krzyzewski were “running for the hills,” but for Vitello, the decision ultimately came down to the challenge and to his own background as a walk-on who had to fight for everything.
He said getting knocked around was part of his own path, and that as painful as losing is, it can also be useful. He believed the Giants would have done better than they have, but added that going through hard times is part of growth.
“The best guys had to come up through the mud a little bit.”
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