The San Francisco Giants still haven’t finalized their staff, but the pieces are all coming together, and a trend is continuing: they’re hiring a lot of people that new manager Tony Vitello is comfortable with. A few days after news broke that Justin Meccage (who didn’t have a prior relationship with Vitello) was going to be the team’s new pitching coach, we found out who will help him develop pitchers: Frank Anderson, who served on Vitello’s staff at Tennessee.
According to a report from Baseball
America’s Jacob Rudner, Anderson — who was named interim head coach at Tennessee while the Volunteers search for a Vitello replacement — has informed the school that he’ll be leaving the college ranks to join Vitello’s staff. While it’s unclear what his role will be on the Giants, Anderson’s specialty has always been pitching, with Rudner noting that he has coached 103 pitchers who were selected in the MLB Draft, including 10 first-round selections.
Anderson, who is the father of long-time MLB starter Brett Anderson, has a long history of coaching college baseball. According to his Wikipedia page, the former college outfielder was an assistant coach from 1984 through 2003, for Emporia State, Howard College, Texas Tech, and Texas, before serving as head coach for Oklahoma State from 2004 through 2012. He then returned to being an assistant coach in 2013 for Houston, before signing on as pitching coach at Tennessee in 2017. Rudner describes Anderson as someone who is “regarded as one of the premier pitching developers in college baseball,” which should be exciting for Giants fans, given the team’s hope to get the most out of youngsters like Hayden Birdsong, Carson Whisenhunt, and Blade Tidwell this coming season.
While a manager hiring coaches that they already have a prior relationship with always raises a few eyebrows, the ones that Vitello has opted for — Anderson, Jayce Tingler, and Hunter Mense — are all highly-regarded coaches. So there wouldn’t seem to be any concerns on that front.
