Former Tennessee baseball head coach Tony Vitello was introduced as San Francisco’s 40th manager in franchise history on Thursday.
He served as the Vols’ head coach from 2018-25, winning one national championship, two SEC Tournament titles and two SEC regular-season championships.
“To leave where I was at was not easy,” Vitello said during his introductory press conference. “It had to be a certain set of circumstances that would even be considered, and ultimately what this was about was, some personal introspective, two words that I diagnosed were risk and challenge, and they both are kind of the same thing.”
Vitello faced Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes while at Tennessee against LSU. The former LSU pitcher discussed Vitello going directly from college to MLB.
“I think out of all the people that are in college baseball, there are probably three or four that could make the jump to being a major league manager,” Skenes said on CBS Sports HQ. “I think Vitello is one of them. He’s a winner.”
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