Don't Laugh, The Tony Vitello to Giants Hire is Actually Brilliant

The San Francisco Giants have a new manager, and he's so unlike any that came before that there's no telling what the experiment will mean for the franchise or for Major League Baseball at large.

The Giants announced the hiring of Tennessee Volunteers head coach Tony Vitello on Wednesday. He'll succeed Bob Melvin in the manager's chair, and the two could not be more different in terms of energy or background.

Melvin played 15 professional seasons from 1981 to 1995, after which he worked as a scout and a coach in the pro ranks. When Buster Posey inherited him upon taking over as the Giants' president of baseball operations last year, Melvin already had 21 years of managing experience under his belt.

By contrast, here are Vitello's pro credentials:

As ESPN's Pete Thamel and Jeff Passan had previously noted, the 47-year-old Vitello is the first major league manager to jump directly from college to the pros without any experience in affiliated baseball. And he's even taking a pay cut for it:

The Giants weren't necessarily determined to make a hire like this. After relieving Melvin in late September, they were initially rumored to be hot after Nick Hundley, a former 12-year catcher who then worked in MLB's baseball operations department and as a special assistant to Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young.

Yet Hundley withdrew his name from consideration last week, ostensibly for family reasons. This was also around when Vitello was reported to be on the Giants' radar, with Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic writing that his energy and charisma had made an impression on Posey in the interview process.

The Case Against Tony Vitello as an MLB Manager

Vitello has clearly demonstrated an ability to win in the college ranks, as he's leaving Tennessee with a career record of 341-131 in seven seasons, plus two SEC titles and one College World Series championship.

It takes a mind for recruiting and shaping talent to achieve that kind of success in college, and Vitello has major creds on both fronts. He routinely recruited stellar classes of talent and his program produced 52 MLB draft picks, including four in the 2025 first round.

Managing in the majors is a different sort of beast, however. It will not be Vitello's job to shop for the groceries, but rather to cook the dinner. To this end, he won't be working with raw players in their teens and early 20s, but grizzled veterans like Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, and Logan Webb, as well as younger guys who have already cut their teeth in the minor leagues.

As Vitello hasn't exactly done his time in professional baseball, it's only fair to have doubts about the respect he's going to command in the clubhouse. And while his high-energy, high-charisma style makes him the polar opposite of the calm, cool and collected Melvin, it could wear thin faster in a 162-game season than it ever could in a 60-70-game college season.

The Case for Tony Vitello as an MLB Manager

Then again, the Giants have kinda-sorta already gotten a taste of the energy Vitello is going to bring.

This year saw them call up Drew Gilbert—who formerly played under Vitello at Tennessee—for his MLB debut in August, and his defense isn't the only reason the Giants subsequently ripped off 20 wins in their last 33 games.

He didn't hold back on his off-the-rails persona, and it changed the club's whole vibe for the better. It had gotten a little listless amid the 20-37 stretch that followed the trade for Devers, as if the air got sucked out of the room as he took time to get his bat going and to adapt to first base.

"The guys are feeding off each other. There's a ton of energy in the dugout, mainly from Drew Gilbert," Webb said in September. "It's a sparkplug. He's actually a really good player to go along with the energy. It's fun to see."

Further, the whole "college coach makes the jump to the pros with no experience" is not as ominous now as it would have been a couple of years ago. Once NIL created a permission structure for amateurs to make decisions based on money, the distinction between the college and professional experience began to blur.

In the words of Jacob Rudner of Baseball America, Vitello himself ran the Volunteers baseball program "as if it were a major league organization disguised as a college program." Analytics and data drove every decision, though Vitello also had to get players to buy in for any of it to work. And it clearly did.

Verdict: This Is Going to Work

No matter what happens next, the Giants were the perfect team to take this risk.

After an 81-81 season, they are right on the cusp of contending in 2026. Yet because they share the National League West with the Los Angeles Dodgers, they're never going to be the biggest, baddest team in the division on the merits of their payroll or their roster. The only thing that can get them over the line is some sort of secret sauce.

When the Giants won 107 games in 2021, the secret sauce was an unusually large and innovative coaching staff. This time around, well, why can't it be an energetic manager who speaks front-office lingo in a dialect the clubhouse can understand?

That it was Posey, specifically, who made this hire only reinforces that he's not messing around from his perch in the Giants' front office. This is now a year-long streak of boldness, with three main chapters consisting of the club's mold-breaking $182 million deal with Adames, the out-of-nowhere Devers trade and now this. In an era defined by extreme risk-aversion, he clearly believes in taking big swings only.

Even if the results aren't immediate, Posey will have cause to keep the Vitello experiment going. The club's talent pipeline is strengthening and should soon start producing players within Vitello's typical age range. One of the club's up-and-comers is notably Gavin Kilen, drafted out of Tennessee with the No. 13 pick in this year's draft.

Even if the Vitello hire ultimately fails, there will still be value in the Giants' decision to try something different. Failure would give them and the other 29 teams a sense of what not to do.

Yet even if this doesn't ultimately work, there's no good reason right now for why it shouldn't.