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On Oct. 18, The Athletic reported that “Tennessee head baseball coach Tony Vitello [was] closing in on [a] deal to become the San Francisco Giants manager.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the San Francisco Giants formally announced his hiring.
Vitello is not the first college baseball coach to become a manager of a Major League Baseball team. Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy coached at Notre Dame and Arizona State before joining the San Diego Padres’ staff.
However, Vitello’s move is unprecedented — a sitting college baseball coach jumping directly into a major-league managerial position. The last comparable case came when Dick Howser left Florida State in 1979 to manage the New York Yankees in 1980, though he had already been the Yankees’ bench coach and even served as interim manager in 1978.
Before taking over as head coach at Tennessee in 2018, Vitello worked as an assistant at his alma mater Missouri, TCU, and Arkansas.
Vitello has turned Tennessee into an SEC powerhouse since arriving on Rocky Top. He first led the Volunteers to the Omaha in 2023 before winning the College World Series a year later. Vitello has a 341-131 overall record, including a 125-85 mark in SEC play.
The Giants went 81-81 this season before firing manager Bob Melvin. He came over after two seasons with the division rival San Diego Padres. During his tenure, San Francisco went 161-63 and they finished third and fourth in the NL West during that time.
One reply on “Tennessee’s Tony Vitello to be next San Francisco Giants manager”
[…] former head coach Tony Vitello no matter the result of their 2026 season. As I wrote in a post when the San Francisco Giants hired him as their new manager, Vitello led Tennessee to the most amount of success that they have ever had with two Omaha runs […]