Giants\u2019 new manager<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat I discovered about him as a player is a lot of the same character values that he still has,\u201d said Jamieson, who\u2019s currently the pitching coach at Missouri. \u201cThat\u2019s the competitiveness, tenacity, being a great teammate, being loyal, doing all the right things. He had qualities as a human being that you recognized, and I personally had a lot of value in those.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone has to kind of earn it a little bit, but I don\u2019t know that I earned it all the way, but the belief factor helped me catapult me into believing I could be a coach,\u201d Vitello told 247 Sports in 2024. \u201cHe gave me an opportunity as a player when nobody really should have, and then a coach when absolutely nobody should have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vitello immediately transitioned from playing to coaching following three seasons as an infielder at Missouri from 2000-02, his first opportunity being the associate head coach for the Salinas Packers of the California Collegiate League. In 2003, Vitello joined Jamieson\u2019s staff as a volunteer assistant. The following year, Jamieson had to fill an opening on his coaching staff when Sean McCann, the program\u2019s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, left for Kansas State.<\/p>\n
Jamieson only interviewed two people for the vacancy. One candidate was an experienced Division II head coach. The other candidate was Vitello, who was only in his mid-20s and had a sparse r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Jamieson had his hesitations.<\/p>\n
At the time, collegiate programs only had three full-time coaches. Was Jamieson comfortable having Vitello be responsible for half of the team? And what about Vitello being main recruiter? Despite those concerns, Jamieson knew Vitello was the right person because he was, in his estimation, the best person.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s obviously going to be a learning curve and growing pains, but the positives way outweighed the negatives,\u201d Jamieson said. \u201cI\u2019ve always tried to hire the best person. I didn\u2019t really care what they coached. Tony was, by far, the best person.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shadowed me as I operated as the pitching coach the first year. Then, very shortly after, I turned it over to him. He\u2019s high IQ. He\u2019s such a good teacher and he earns the players\u2019 trust because of that connection piece. As long as you\u2019re saying the right things and players believe in you, that\u2019s going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers experienced an extended run of success under Jamieson with Vitello as an assistant, making seven consecutive postseasons from 2003-09. In \u201806, Missouri came within one win of making the College World Series. That success was due in part to Vitello\u2019s ability to recruit players who, to Jamieson, possessed more than just talent.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur teams in Missouri, you didn\u2019t want to play us. You certainly didn\u2019t want to play us late in the year because of the competitiveness and who we were as a team,\u201d Jamieson said. \u201cTony does a really good job of identifying that in people. I don\u2019t know if he had specific things he was looking for or just had a gut feel, but we very rarely missed on a player from a character standpoint. I think that\u2019s what led to our success. We had our share of talent, but most of the talent that we had developed into talent, not recruited talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among those who Vitello worked with was future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, whose freshman year coincided with Vitello\u2019s first season as a full-time assistant.<\/p>\n
Scherzer, a future Hall of Famer, was far from a finished product when he arrived in Columbia. As a freshman, Scherzer exerted so much effort in his delivery that his cap fell off when he whipped his head. Vitello worked with Scherzer to pitch with more balance and control, helping Scherzer win Big 12 Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kind of grew up together in our program,\u201d Jamieson said. \u201cMax would go to the end of the world for Tony because of what Tony did for him as a coach, not necessarily developing him as a pitcher but developing him as a person. Max had things he had to clean up from the baseball side of things, but I think who he became as a person, he owes a lot of that to Tony.\u201d<\/p>\n
There weren\u2019t many roles that Vitello didn\u2019t fulfill during Missouri. Vitello did just about everything during his eight seasons with the program, whether it was working with pitchers to helping infielders and outfielders to being a first-base coach. Jamieson knew Vitello wanted to be head coach at some point, understanding that Vitello\u2019s willingness to wear different hats would serve him well when it came time for him to run his own team.<\/p>\n
Following eight seasons, Vitello left Missouri to work as an assistant at TCU from 2011-13, then at Arkansas from 2014-17 before landing his first head coaching job at Tennessee. After transforming the Vols into one of college baseball\u2019s best programs, he\u2019s making the unprecedented leap from college head coach to major-league manager.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best managers are the ones that have their players ready to play,\u201d Jamieson said. \u201cIt\u2019s all of those conversations and things that happen away from the field, in the clubhouse. Trust is developed through those relationships, and that\u2019s what Tony\u2019s great at. It may take him some time to get there \u2014\u00a0it always does to build trust \u2014 but once his players get to know who he is, I don\u2019t think not having played professionally is going to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tim Jamieson took the chance. Following Tony Vitello\u2019s freshman season at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,5776,2178,162,5774,5775,853,4,5777,378,5778,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-403730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-giants","12":"tag-giants-hq","13":"tag-inside-sports","14":"tag-latest-headlines","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-peninsula","17":"tag-san-francisco","18":"tag-san-francisco-county","19":"tag-san-francisco-giants","20":"tag-sanfrancisco","21":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","22":"tag-sf","23":"tag-sf-giants","24":"tag-sfgiants","25":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115452158265904682","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}