LAS VEGAS — New San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello, the first to make the leap straight from NCAA power into helming a big-league dugout, it pulling together some of his Tigers ties to infuse his first staff with Mizzou influence.
Vitello, a St. Louis native, has already added two fellow alumni of the Mizzou baseball program and former teammates to his first major-league staff.
Jayce Tingler, the former Padres manager, has joined Vitello’s staff for a role and title not yet determined. He could be bench coach, The Athletic and other reports suggested. Tingler and Vitello played together on Tim Jamieson’s Mizzou teams in the early 2000s. Hunter Mense, the assistant hitting coach for the American League champion Toronto Blue Jays, is also moving to San Francisco to be a hitting coach on Vitello’s first staff.
Mense also played for the Tigers in the early 2000s and was there when Vitello was an assistant coach.
Vitello, a De Smet High graduate, spent a few seasons as an infielder for the Tigers before rising through the program in coaching positions. He was a powerful recruiter for the team and helped Jamieson and others create a pipeline of pitching talent that funneled in the pros. That group included Aaron Crow, Kyle Gibson, Nathan Culp, Nick Tepesch and future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer. As recently as this past spring, the Tigers’ baseball facility had a framed story from the Post-Dispatch that referred to Mizzou as “Pitcher U.”
Tingler was most recently with the Twins as their bench coach, and he’s found success in the majors as a support coach following two years as the manager with the Padres.
Mense has moved through the Jays’ organization as a coach and spent the past several years as their hitting coordinator. He joined the big-league staff as the assistant hitting coach ahead of the 2022 season.
In 2003, Tingler was a senior for the Tigers and led them to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1996. Tingler set career records for walks and runs scored as Mizzou began play in the regional, and that season he’d finish with a three-hit tournament game to bat .395 for the Tigers with a on-base percentage greater than .500 for the season.
He was drafted in the 10th round by Toronto a month after the regional, but what he left behind in Columbia, Missouri, was noteworthy.
Tingler’s team made the first of seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances for the Tigers, from 2003 through 2009. The 2006 tournament team featured Scherzer on the mound as one of the top college pitching prospects in the country and Mense in the outfield on his way to being a 17th-round pick by the Marlins. Scherzer was drafted 11th overall.
By that time, Vitello was an assistant coach for the Tigers, serving in a variety of roles from first-base coach to pitching coach at times.
Vitello went from Mizzou to success with the programs at TCU and Arkansas before being passed over by the Tigers one year and hired to lead Tennessee’s program the next. Vitello turned the Volunteers into an SEC power and won the NCAA College World Series in 2024.
Earlier this month, the Giants introduced Vitello as the 40th manager in their history. He agreed to a three-year deal reportedly worth $3.5 million each season to push first-year manager salaries forward.
He was one of the few managers who traveled to Las Vegas this week to attend the GM Meetings, and that gave him a chance to interact with Giants officials but also sit in on some of their meetings, like with agents.
While talking to reporters Tuesday at the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey said three members of the previous coach staff would be returning for 2026: assistant hitting coach Oscar Bernard, quality control coach Taira Uematsu, and bullpen catcher Eliezer Zambrano. Posey told reporters that he and Vitello are collaborating on filling out the coaching staff.
“It has been a collaboration, and I think you’re going to be most productive in that way,” Posey told reporters. “I don’t think it would be fair for me to come in and say, ‘I am going to choose every single person.’ That’s just not the way that I think is best, or vice versa for him to operate that way, as well.”
Vitello’s first two picks come with familiar college stripes.
And still out there this winter as a possibility is a reunion with one of his closest friends, another St. Louis-area native plus an all-time great from the Mizzou baseball program with a retired number and three Cy Young awards already on his resume.
Scherzer, now 41 and fresh off a fourth World Series appearance and American League pennant with Toronto, is a free agent.
His agent, Scott Boras, said Wednesday he’s eager to pitch.
“He’s a guy that’s got the genius and blessing of a ball that continues to come out at 95-96 (mph),” Boras said. “When you watch the playoffs and you heard that Scherzer was starting you saw what it did to their locker room. It relaxed everybody.”