After an odd stop-and-start week of news, the San Francisco Giants have finally made it official: they’re hiring Tony Vitello to be their next manager.
On Saturday, Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic broke the news that the Giants were “closing in on hiring” Vitello, who is currently the head coach at the University of Tennessee, where he has transformed the program. ESPN’s Jeff Passan then reported that Vitello had not yet accepted the job, and that a decision would likely be made in the next 72 hours,
a time frame that was eclipsed on Tuesday.
During those 72+ hours, rumors and reports flew in a million directions. Vitello reportedly had a meeting with his team on Saturday, with some claiming that he had told players he was leaving, others claiming he had told players he was staying, and others still claiming that he had informed players that he had no idea what he was doing. There were reports of Vitello’s frustrations with Tennessee’s athletic director, claims that he was using the Giants as leverage for a heftier contract with the college, and numerous videos of him at practice.
And then, finally, on Wednesday, we got the actual news: Passan and his colleague Pete Thamel reported that Vitello is “finalizing a deal” to join the Giants. The Giants are expected to announce the news later today.
It’s an unprecedented hire, as Vitello will become the first sitting college coach to take a managerial job in MLB. He has no experience in Major League Baseball, but has all the obsessive traits that Buster Posey identified when laying out what he would be looking for in a new manager, and has a long history of both developmental success and culture shaping. It’s an exceptionally bold move — which is not something you can normally say about managerial hires — but it comes with tremendous reward potential.
While the financials of the deal are not yet known, they’ll be interesting to see. Vitello had a $3 million salary with Tennessee, as well as a $3 million buyout. That’s on the high end for an MLB manager, and it seems reasonable to assume his salary will also have to reflect the dramatically lesser job security in the Majors, the increase in cost of living when moving from Knoxville to the Bay Area, and the existence of state income taxes in California.
The Giants are the third team this offseason to hire a manager, joining the Texas Rangers (Skip Schumaker) and Los Angeles Angels (Kurt Suzuki). Six more teams have vacant manager roles that they’ll have to fill.
With Vitello hired relatively early in the offseason, the Giants can now hit the ground running when the World Series concludes and free agency begins. Welcome to the squad, Tony.
