In between this surprise, there was talk of Bruce Bochy, Nick Hundley all but had the job before the Padres position became available (at least, this is me reading between the lines); and other catchers including Vance Wilson and Kurt Suzuki were interviewed while local medial clamored for the team to trade for former backup catcher and current Guardians manager Stephen Vogt. But Buster Posey wants someone who will be in the job for a while and grow into the position, and he seems to have a youthful energy the franchise sorely needs and in a package that doesn’t look and sound like Gabe Kapler.
Baggarly & co. talk up Vitello’s “dynamism and charisma” and suggest he’ll hit the ground running as a major league manager. Helping matters, supposedly, is that the Giants’ top pick in this past draft was a star infielder for Vitello. Maui Ahuna is already in the organization from a previous draft, and other Volunteers, Drew Gilbert & Blade Tidwell, just came over.
Most great college sports programs have a defined brand. For Tennessee under Vitello, it’s three things: pitchers who throw hard, position players who hit for power, and a big attitude throughout the roster.
That last part has made Tennessee a bit polarizing nationally. If there’s anything more annoying than a team that wins all the time, it’s a team that wins all the time and crows about it.
Now, the Giants are probably 1, 2, or several years away from being good again and Baumann is on the fence about college coaches making the leap without any MLB staffing experience (as Brewers’ manager Pat Murphy had before he was elevated), so you can imagine a situation where a fiery personality and a below average roster don’t really inspire, but you can also imagine a passionate manager squeezing just a little bit more out of the roster in a way that avoids too-long losing streaks or prevents 4-9 records against the Dodgers and Padres year in and year out.
This is a big story to break, and one of the “industry sources” that Andrew Baggarly has had frequent contact with over the years, including before he moved from the field to the front office, is Buster Posey himself, so I feel that it’s solid reporting to go on to start thinking about this news being announced any day now. It’d be a heckuva swing and a fun experiment-but-not-really-an-experiment. The Giants need a shakeup, and hiring a fiery college coach with a successful track record isn’t so outside the box that it’s hard to imagine it not working. In fact, it’s just crazy enough to work.