Nobody knows how Tony Vitello will do as the San Francisco Giants manager. He doesn’t know. The organization doesn’t know. We don’t know. Nobody from the Giants is being coy about it, either. It’s part of the fun. Lift your hands up, and let’s go down this roller coaster together.
Here’s another fun thing about any new manager: It might take years to know if it’s working out. Oh, you might think you have a read on the manager, and then suddenly it’s the National League Championship Series, and he’s not bringing his closer in with the game on the line.
You’re the world’s biggest fan of a manager because of how fiery and engaging he is, only to learn that he’s the kind of guy who will let Mark Gardner hit for himself with two outs, the bases loaded and the season on the line.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a two-game winning streak away from winning the World Series again, and there are still hundreds of thousands of fans who are convinced Dave Roberts is a buffoon. Bruce Bochy is going to the Hall of Fame, but I’m not sure if that happens if the Tampa Bay Rays draft Buster Posey. Perhaps Bochy and the Giants would have parted ways sooner, and he would have been much closer to Joe Altobelli than Roger Craig in franchise lore.
Bruce Bochy became a Hall of Fame-caliber manager in large part because he had players who could get the team to the postseason, where he could work his magic. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
Every manager will drive you nuts. Every manager is only as good as his roster. Every manager is a big ol’ jack-in-the-box, and you don’t know what’s going to pop out until it’s an elimination game in the playoffs. Between now and then, you hope the vibes are good, the quotes are interesting and the wins are plentiful.
And with any luck, this is the last time you’ll think about Vitello until next postseason.
Well, this can’t be the last time you’ll literally think of him. However, if everything goes right, you shouldn’t have to consider him. If this works as well as Posey and the Giants are hoping it will, you won’t have to think about him in a big picture, “What are we doing here, exactly?” kind of way. He’ll be on your TV almost every night, but it won’t feel weird to see him there. He’ll make moves you like, moves you don’t like, start guys you want benched and bench guys you want to start, but not in a way you haven’t seen before.
If the Giants go on a winning streak, it’ll be because a bunch of players are on hot streaks. If they go on a losing streak, it’ll be because a bunch of players are ice cold. Hopefully, Vitello can help address the fundamentals that have been lacking for the Giants, like so many other teams around baseball, but managers don’t get any credit for the winning streaks. They might get some of the blame for the losing streaks, but that typically doesn’t happen until they’ve already established themselves as future ex-managers.
That’s because it’s hard for a manager to be the problem. In an era where every manager understands the analytics and coordinates with the front office before every game, the strategic differences will be minimal.
The Giants won’t be a sacrifice-happy team next year. The hit-and-run isn’t coming back, so don’t expect Bryce Eldridge to get caught stealing as many times as Will Clark did in 1987. The guy with a .280 OBP won’t be at the top of the lineup (and getting the most at-bats on the team) because he’s fast. This isn’t to say that managing is robotic now, but the strategic floor is so much higher than it used to be.
It’s certainly possible for a manager to befoul the clubhouse atmosphere enough to make the team worse, but that would require him to befoul the place so much that it would affect the survival instincts of players who want to succeed, have fun and make more money. Vitello doesn’t seem like that kind of befouler. There’s certainly no evidence of him befouling anything like that before.
A quote from Vitello’s news conference on Thursday that stands out:
(Coaching a player like Bryce Eldridge) is exactly what I was doing a week ago. And then you climb the ladder to a guy like Justin Verlander or Max Scherzer, and those conversations are completely different. It has to be individualistic.
Don’t think of it as different sets of rules for different people, but rather as different approaches for different personalities. The best managers do it instinctually. Modern baseball has no use for the disciplinarians of olden times. It’s hilarious to listen to Duane Kuiper talk about how terrifying Frank Robinson could be — heck, it was even a part of the ad campaigns — but that’s not what the modern player wants or needs. These are self-starters, by definition.
The players who had to be coddled and cajoled into performing well washed out before A-ball. The competition is just too fierce, and almost all of the players in the majors needed more than their physical talent to get there. A lot of them are being paid millions of dollars to stay there. That doesn’t seem like a group that, in general, needs or wants a taskmaster.
The modern baseball team needs a button-pusher. They also need a confidence builder. They need someone who can challenge a player without making him feel threatened. They need someone to build up a rookie in an 0-for-his-career slump, and they need someone who can manage a player with a bruised ego, a superstar struggling at baseball for the first time in his life. They need all of the above and more. The modern manager needs to be a shapeshifter and/or a magician.
Maybe that’s Vitello. That’s what Buster Posey and the Giants believe, anyway. It’s what they want you to believe, and with enough wins, you just might. Yet you still won’t know if he’s the guy until he’s dogpiling with the rest of the team on a mound somewhere.
Even if he is that kind of managerial golden child, it won’t make a lick of difference if the Giants screw up the offseason. It won’t make a difference whether injuries ravage the team or more veterans take a step back than forward. It won’t matter if the organization doesn’t start producing everyday players and reliable starting pitchers.
And then, even if all that goes better than expected, you won’t know how you really feel about Vitello until it’s two outs in the fifth inning of Game 7, when he pulls a starter too early or too late. He might make the kind of managerial decision that wakes you up almost a quarter-century later, in a cold sweat, wondering why Kenny Lofton played center field in the 2002 World Series and Tsuyoshi Shinjo was the DH instead of the other way around. And that’s if you’re lucky.
I’d like to say that it shouldn’t be boring, but it might be. That’s up to the players. A manager doing handstands in the dugout isn’t going to make a team watchable if they have a .650 OPS. It’s already an interesting offseason, though. Now all the Giants have to do is the other 95 percent of the work.