‘The front office is furious with the way this is going, the new manager is furious’ – Tony Vitello and the Giants are spiraling
The first two months of Tony Vitello’s time as the manager of the San Francisco Giants couldn’t be going much worse. The Giants are spiraling out of control with no signs of improvement on the horizon.
The first two months of the Tony Vitello era couldn’t be going much worse for the San Francisco Giants.
And things don’t appear to be on the verge of improving for the former Tennessee Vols baseball coach.
The Giants have one of the worst records in MLB, veteran players are underperforming, fans and media are baffled that top prospect Bryce Eldridge was called up just to sit on the bench, and there’s already rampant speculation that Vitello wishes he was back in college.
So yeah, things haven’t exactly gone smoothly for Vitello and the Giants.
And no one in San Francisco is happy about it.
“Every frustration the Giants fans are feeling is being felt times two inside the Giants franchise,” said Giants play-by-play announcer Dave Flemming this week. “The front office is furious with the way this is going. The new manager is furious with the way this is going. The players are really unhappy.
“I don’t want to use the word embarrassed, but I think the players are embarrassed to a degree about the way that they’re playing. So the frustration is totally legitimate this season. The Giants had real playoff aspirations and expectations, and on paper I thought they were a playoff team. It’s going to be real hard for them to recover from this.”
It’s not all Tony Vitello’s fault
Vitello certainly shares some of the blame for the Giants’ horrible start to the season — the former Tennessee coach has made some mistakes (but that’s true of every manager, even the longtime vets) — but it’s not all his fault. Far from it.
A lot of the issue is that the roster is poorly constructed. And that may be because the Giants have a Derek Jeter/Michael Jordan situation going on in the front office.
Jeter famously did a terrible job as the top decision-maker for the Miami Marlins. The same was true for Jordan in his role as a top decision-maker with the Charlotte Hornets.
San Francisco’s front office is led by future Hall of Fame catcher Buster Posey, who spent his entire playing career with the Giants.
Posey is obviously a smart baseball man, but that doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee that he’s going to be an elite general manager/president of baseball ops. We have plenty of evidence that most Hall of Fame players don’t perform well in that role.
The jury is still out on Buster Posey and Tony Vitello
Ultimately, the blame for the early season struggles has to mostly fall on Posey. The roster is flawed — there’s only so much Vitello can do. It was always expected that Vitello was going to have some growing pains as he adjusts to life in the big leagues — that was something Posey accepted by making an unprecedented hire, which is another reason why it’s not totally fair to put the early season struggles on Vitello.
Maybe things turn around this summer. You never know in this crazy sport. But it certainly looks bleak for now.