SAN FRANCISCO — A few days before the start of camp, the Giants officially announced what is just about an entirely new coaching staff. 

Tony Vitello’s group will include a new hitting coach — Hunter Mense — and pitching coach — Justin Meccage — and nine new names to the big league staff overall. The 2026 base coaches will be Shane Robinson (first base) and Hector Borg (third base), both of whom worked with Giants minor leaguers last season.

The other newcomers are Ron Washington (infield), Frank Anderson (director of Major League pitching), Christian Wonders (assistant pitching coach) and Jesse Chavez (bullpen). The holdovers from Bob Melvin’s staff are longtime Giants coach Taira Uematsu (quality control), Oscar Bernard (assistant hitting coach), Eliezer Zambrano (bullpen catcher) and Alex Burg, who earned a promotion and now will be a field coordinator in addition to coaching the catchers. 

Mense was with Toronto last season, working with a Blue Jays lineup that had the highest batting average in the big leagues and was second-to-last in strikeouts. Those are two areas that Buster Posey has targeted, most recently with the addition of second baseman Luis Arraez. Mense, who played under Vitello at Missouri, will be assisted by only Bernard, as the Giants opted not to go with a three-hitting-coach model this time. 

Anderson, the father of former big league pitcher Brett Anderson, was with Vitello throughout his time at Tennessee and was known for being one of the collegiate game’s best at developing pitchers. He was one of two Tennessee employees to join Vitello in San Francisco, along with Quentin Eberhardt, who will help run their strength and conditioning program. 

Meccage, 45, takes over for J.P. Martinez, who is now with the Atlanta Braves. He spent last season as the Triple-A pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers and previously worked at the big league level in Pittsburgh. Wonders, 33, joins the Giants after two years as a pitching coordinator with the Tampa Bay Rays. At the beginning of his career, he coached Patrick Bailey and Christian Koss in the Cape Cod League. 

Having previous managerial experience on Vitello’s staff was crucial, as he will be the first to jump straight from being a college coach to an MLB manager with no prior professional experience. He’ll be helped in that area by Tingler, who played with Vitello at Missouri and is a longtime friend. Tingler managed the San Diego Padres for two seasons and was most recently the bench coach for the Minnesota Twins. 

Washington has managed the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels and has been a big league coach for three decades; he is known as one of the industry’s best infield coaches. 

“His ability to coach infielders — you could strip everything away other than that, and what you’ve got there is a great value,” Vitello said at the Winter Meetings in December. 

Robinson, 41, and Borg, 40, continue a tradition of promoting young coaches from within when there is a managerial change. Borg’s journey has been particularly interesting; he signed with the Giants as an international free agent in 2004 and has been a coach in their minor league system since 2008. 

The last newcomer, Chavez, is fresh off a big league pitching mound. The right-handed reliever spent 18 seasons in the big leagues and made four appearances for the Atlanta Braves last season. 

The full staff met in Orlando a couple of months ago to go over 2026 plans and get to know one another. While it took some time to finalize the list, it ended up being all of the previously reported names. Vitello said at the Winter Meetings that he was looking for a group that would “cover up any blind spots” and be “excited to come to the park, regardless of age.”

“(We’re) just creating a group that’s going to have an energy to them that I think we all kind of envision for the organization,” he said. “I think everyone has kind of got their own brand name. It’s still the San Francisco Giants but this team is this year’s team and this coaching staff is this year’s coaching staff. We’re just trying to fulfill that vision.”

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast