{"id":699622,"date":"2026-05-15T13:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T13:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/699622\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T13:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T13:45:15","slug":"tony-vitello-sacrificed-standards-for-a-win-he-walked-away-empty-handed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/699622\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello sacrificed standards for a win. He walked away empty-handed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tony Vitello was handed a gift on a silver platter, and he somehow mistook it for a live grenade.<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019 rookie manager, straight out of the college ranks, had a perfect, frictionless opportunity to establish his authority in a big-league clubhouse. All he had to do was staple Willy Adames to the bench for one night.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday in L.A., with runners on first and second with one out in the seventh against a to-that-point dominant Shohei Ohtani, Adames forgot the number of outs<\/a> after being caught chatting up Mookie Betts before Drew Gilbert\u2019s deep fly out to left-center field. He was chugging around third base and heading home by the time the ball was relayed to second for an easy danger-ending, Ohtani-saving<\/a> double-play.<\/p>\n

It was the Giants\u2019 best chance to score in a game they ultimately lost 4-0.<\/p>\n

It was downright unacceptable, unquestionably inexcusable carelessness; the kind of play that wouldn\u2019t fly in even a high school game.<\/p>\n

You couldn\u2019t have written a better script for the new manager. Adames wore the mistake like the pro he is<\/a>, admitted he screwed up, and practically conceded he should be benched for it. There was no explaining away a mistake like that. He apologized and said he\u2019d respect any decision the manager made regarding his playing time on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The college coach had an easy pro win.<\/p>\n

But Vitello blinked. He, like so many other Giants this season, whiffed.<\/p>\n

Adames started Thursday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

It was the simplest test of Vitello\u2019s young major league career, an open-book quiz on Clubhouse Management 101.<\/p>\n

When your highly-paid veteran shortstop turns a crucial, rare offensive spark into a punchline because he\u2019s distracted by idle gossip with the opposition, you sit him down for a day. You make an example out of him, just as you would the last guy on the roster. You take a stand for playing the game the right way and keeping your head in the proceedings.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t about malice; it\u2019s about the standard.<\/p>\n

Benching him on Thursday wouldn\u2019t have been an act of vindictiveness, just as playing him wasn\u2019t an act of mercy.<\/p>\n

Vitello\u2019s justification for playing Adames?<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to win the game today is why he\u2019s in the lineup,\u201d Vitello said.<\/p>\n

How\u2019d that work out?<\/p>\n

The Giants lost 5-2.<\/p>\n

And Adames? He went a robust 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. The baseball gods have a wicked sense of humor, but they rarely miss the mark.<\/p>\n

Vitello is the fiery college coach trying to find his footing \u2014\u00a0and his fire \u2014 in the big leagues.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an unprecedented transition that\u2019s proving to be as tricky as expected \u2014 perhaps even trickier.<\/p>\n

In the SEC, Vitello was a dictator, a fiery lord of the dugout who could bench a kid for a bad haircut. His Tennessee teams might have boasted big personalities, but they weren\u2019t joking around on the diamond.<\/p>\n

In the big leagues, managers are diplomats, navigating egos worth more than the GDP of a small island nation.<\/p>\n

But diplomacy doesn\u2019t mean total abdication of duty.<\/p>\n

Right now, Vitello looks less like a manager and more like a substitute teacher.<\/p>\n

Adames wouldn\u2019t have fought a benching. Even if he had a big ego (he doesn\u2019t), what footing did he have here?<\/p>\n

His heart might be in the right place, but his head was floating somewhere in the stratosphere, presumably discussing \u201cthe pod\u201d with Mookie.<\/p>\n

A day on the pine wouldn\u2019t have caused a mutiny. It would have been met with a collective, silent nod from the rest of the roster.<\/p>\n

Adames would have paid his playing-time penance (as well as a fine to the team\u2019s kangaroo court \u2014 perhaps funding a postgame pizza party), and everyone would have moved on from the mistake.<\/p>\n

Instead, Vitello\u2019s inaction speaks volumes. And it has a real chance to linger.<\/p>\n

Because it tells the roster that careless play carries no consequences.<\/p>\n

It tells the veterans that the new guy doesn\u2019t have the stomach for big-league discipline.<\/p>\n

And it tells fans there is no baseline standard of play the Giants are trying to uphold.<\/p>\n

You can cross the line, but if it\u2019s an honest mistake and you\u2019re a good player (though Adames\u2019 numbers stand in stark contrast to that concept), they\u2019ll just move the line for you.<\/p>\n

Vitello had a layup. He had a chance to assert himself in the pros; to show he isn\u2019t just happy to be here. (If he is.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t have to scream. He didn\u2019t have to throw a chair. He merely had to tap the brakes on Adames\u2019 playing time for a day, embrace the awkwardness for a few innings (he could have put him in as a defensive replacement \u2014 this is slap-on-the-wrist stuff), and let the silence do the talking.<\/p>\n

Instead, he opted for the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n

It was a weak move from a manager who was sold as anything but passive. A manager who, a quarter of the way through the season, has yet to put his stamp on the team in a positive way.<\/p>\n

But in a negative way? After Thursday, that\u2019s a conversation.<\/p>\n

Because if Vitello can\u2019t handle a simple case of a star player forgetting the outs at a critical juncture of the game against an archrival, who is to say what will be accepted next for a team that\u2019s already flirting with effective playoff elimination?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tony Vitello was handed a gift on a silver platter, and he somehow mistook it for a live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,5776,2178,162,5774,5775,853,4,5777,378,5778,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,185,430],"class_list":["post-699622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-giants","tag-baseball","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-giants","tag-giants-hq","tag-inside-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-peninsula","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-county","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfranciscogiants","tag-sf","tag-sf-giants","tag-sfgiants","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116578898713529621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699622","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=699622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}