{"id":672906,"date":"2026-04-11T02:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/672906\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T02:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:00:28","slug":"tony-vitello-gives-a-peek-behind-the-curtain-on-sf-giants-bullpen-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/672906\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello gives a peek behind the curtain on SF Giants bullpen strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Vitello had his work cut out for him with the SF Giants bullpen coming into this season. With so much uncertainty surrounding the team\u2019s relievers<\/a> and the fact that Vitello has never managed a big league bullpen before, there was cause for concern<\/a>. So far, there have been mixed results and Vitello gave a brief glimpse behind the curtain of how he and his staff try to manage the bullpen.<\/p>\n

After Wednesday\u2019s win against the Philadelphia Phillies in which the bullpen was phenomenal, Vitello spoke to reporters after the game and talked about how he decides who will be used in certain situations by referencing a clipboard he consults. This quote comes from a recent article<\/a> by Andrew Baggarly in The Athletic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen you\u2019ve got this \u2014 well, you can\u2019t see it, maybe I shouldn\u2019t show it \u2014 you got all these boxes and data and I can show you guys what it says, and we\u2019re definitely using it, but we\u2019re not leaning on it. It\u2019s not the only thing we use. Sometimes it can be a tiebreaker. Sometimes it\u2019s such a loud number that you do invest in the analytical side. And the rest is just who you think the best guy is down there.\u201d<\/p>\n

SF Giants manager Tony vitello has balanced approach on bullpen strategy<\/p>\n

That seems like a pretty fair strategy even with the added flourish if Vitello offering to show something like that to reporters. It\u2019s not what some fans might mythologize as the old school way of doing things in which they suppose managers went entirely off their gut rather than numbers. It\u2019s also not a script that Buster Posey and Zack Minasian force him to stick to no matter what.<\/p>\n

It seems like there\u2019s room for flexibility and Vitello has the authority to roll with someone who has looked good like he did on Wednesday by using Caleb Kilian to face Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper. That decision looks pretty terrible on paper, but it worked out to great effect.<\/p>\n

There have also been miscues. Using Ryan Borucki in a high-leverage spot in the first game of the series looks like a pretty bad decision<\/a> in retrospect. But there will be some good and some bad with the bullpen this year which is inevitable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vitello\u2019s hands are somewhat tied due to the talent at his disposal so there are probably going to be some blown leads and some tough questions to answer whenever moves backfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s good to know that Vitello has the ability to learn and grow and make mistakes rather than having to adhere to a strict set of rules laid down by the front office.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello had his work cut out for him with the SF Giants bullpen coming into this season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-672906","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-giants","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-giants","13":"tag-sanfrancisco","14":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-giants","17":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116383607912348140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672906","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=672906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}