San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello used his first news conference Monday to criticize a report that announced his hiring four days before accepting the job, saying it created chaos for his Tennessee baseball staff.
Vitello, who led Tennessee to a national championship in 2024 and two Southeastern Conference (SEC) tournament championships in his eight seasons at the school, began his news conference by asking reporters when they heard that he had accepted the Giants job.
When reporters said it was Oct. 18, 2025, Vitello began to share details about what was going on behind the scenes, saying that he had not decided anything at that point. The Giants officially announced his hiring Oct. 22, 2025.
“I needed confirmation from the coaches that I worked with that helped boost my status, that they were OK with what was going to go on and they were going to be OK with their jobs,” Vitello said in a video posted by NBC Sports Bay Area. “That staff had always been built as like, next man up. All of a sudden, that was being threatened, so it was kind of hard to do something for yourself and your teammates get left behind.”
Vitello also shared some of the reactions that he experienced when The Athletic’s report came out on the 18th.
“I did a really damn good job at keeping that away from our team, our recruiting and it was not a distraction,” Vitello said. “Then all of a sudden, in the middle of practice, I see our first and third base coach freaking out and they freaked out on me, too and for no reason because at that point, nothing was going to happen.”
Vitello eventually had to hold a meeting with the team and tell them what was happening.
Vitello is tasked with turning around a Giants team that finished in third place in the National League West with an 81-81 record last season, 12 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for first place and two games out of the third and final wild-card spot. As for his former team, Vitello thinks they will still have success without him.
“The guys care about the guys when the season’s going on,” Vitello said. “Hopefully they love their coaches, but that thing was never a distraction. They’ve got talent and they’ve got good kids, so they’re going to be just fine. But, yeah, that was not a fun Saturday and then it kind of affected how the next few days went.”