Tony Vitello’s baseball fate has been sealed, and it’s unfortunate because it didn’t have to be this way
Things are not going well for former Tennessee coach Tony Vitello with the San Francisco Giants. In fact, appears they’re already trying to run him out of town.
I think it’s over for Tony Vitello in San Francisco.
I really do.
It’s just a matter of when it’s officially over.
When Vitello left Tennessee last fall to become the new manager of the San Francisco Giants, the big question was how he would be received by big leaguers despite having no previous minor league or MLB experience.
Many of the Giants’ players said the right things, and I think many of them truly respect and value Vitello’s baseball acumen.
But Vitello was always going to have to learn on the job, and this isn’t a learning-on-the-job type of gig — not when you have as much learning to do as Vitello does.
The biggest problem for Vitello, though, is that he doesn’t have the years-long minor league grind in his back pocket that allows him to throw his weight around in the clubhouse when it’s needed.
That’s not something that’s needed often in the big leagues — if it is, the team probably has much bigger problems — but it is something that a manager will need from time to time.
Vitello needed it this week when first baseman Rafael Devers refused to come out of the game for a pinch runner.
The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal described the scene as “insubordination” by Devers.
Devers, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, refused to speak to the media after the game. And Vitello said he had no plans to talk to Devers specifically about the incident.
To be clear, Devers is 100 percent in the wrong. I understand a player wanting to compete, but once the move has been made, there’s no undoing it. Devers undoubtedly knows that he was creating controversy for the Giants by wagging his finger at the manager and refusing to come off the base like it was a scene from Major League.
And I understand Vitello’s hesitancy to call out a three-time All-Star who is making $27 million annually and is signed through 2033.
It’s a weird spot for Vitello. He didn’t come up through the minor leagues, so he didn’t “pay his dues” in the eyes of some in the sport. He wasn’t an MLB player who got to witness how these things were handled from afar. Nor was he a bench coach or a hitting coach or any other type of coach. Instead, Vitello went straight into a role where he is supposed to handle situations like this despite having no experience, even as a bystander, with these types of situations at the big league level. And Vitello, at least based on his inaction, doesn’t feel like he has the credibility to call out Devers.
If that’s where Vitello is at, then it’s over. He has to be able to handle this type of stuff or it’s never going to work out.
I think Vitello is a great baseball man. I think he cares about people and wants to get the best out of players. And I think he’s more than willing to have tough conversations. But it’s tough for Vitello to call out a 29-year-old from the Dominican Republic who went through the grind of Dominican summer leagues, rookie league ball, and every other level of the minors when that 29-year-old can look at him and say, “You don’t anything about this journey or what it takes to get here because you haven’t lived it”.
How can Vitello ever gain that credibility? He’s always going to be viewed by some folks in the sport as the guy who skipped all the steps that a manager has always had to take.
There’s a reason we’ve never seen a college baseball coach make the jump directly into a manager’s role. And we’re seeing that reason play out in real time.