University of Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello has emerged as a front-runner for the San Francisco Giants’ managerial job, and a resolution on a potential deal is expected in the next 24 to 72 hours, sources told ESPN on Saturday, confirming multiple reports.
Should the sides agree on a contract, Vitello would become the first manager in major league history to jump directly from a college program to the big leagues without experience in a professional organization.
Vitello, 47, led Tennessee to a Men’s College World Series title in 2024 and is regarded as one of the best coaches in college baseball. He would replace Bob Melvin, who was fired Sept. 29 after an 81-81 season, the Giants’ fourth consecutive season without a playoff berth.
San Francisco president of baseball operations Buster Posey has considered several managerial candidates, among them former Giants catcher Nick Hundley and another pair of former big league catchers in Kurt Suzuki and Vance Wilson. The Giants have instead trained their interest on Vitello, who has distinguished himself as one of the preeminent recruiters and talent developers in the country during a two-decade career as an assistant and head coach in college.
The buyout on his deal at Tennessee is $3 million, the same as his annual salary, sources said.
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The move from college to professional baseball is rare, though not unprecedented. Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy spent 25 years coaching in college before joining the San Diego Padres, with whom he managed in the minor leagues. Murphy then spent eight years as the Brewers’ bench coach before taking over as manager in 2024, when he was named National League Manager of the Year.
Vitello’s transition to the major leagues would come at a far more rapid pace. He would inherit a Giants team competing in a loaded NL West, with the division-winning Los Angeles Dodgers clinching a World Series berth Friday night. San Francisco returns a core of first baseman Rafael Devers, shortstop Willy Adames and third baseman Matt Chapman and is expected to be active in free agency this winter, sources said.
After more than 10 years as an assistant coach at Missouri, TCU and Arkansas, Vitello took over a moribund Tennessee program before the 2018 season and posted a 341-131 record, advancing to the Men’s College World Series in 2021, 2023 and 2024. With a pair of eventual first-round picks and four second-rounders, Tennessee beat Texas A&M to win the school’s first baseball national championship in 2024.
Vitello, whose boisterous personality endeared him at Tennessee and chafed other SEC schools, would enter a different realm in MLB. Whereas college jobs are often defined by the success of recruiting classes, major league teams are constructed by baseball operations departments, with the manager relied upon for clubhouse cohesion, in-game decision-making, bullpen usage and daily media interactions.
The reluctance of MLB teams to dip into the college ranks for managers is long established and has run counter to the hiring practices of other professional sports leagues. NFL teams have regularly plucked head coaches from the college ranks, and in the NBA, there is no stigma associated with college coaches. The closest facsimile to Vitello’s hiring was in 2019, when pitching coach Wes Johnson left Arkansas to take the same role with the Minnesota Twins. Johnson left the Twins in 2022 to accept the pitching coach job at LSU before joining Georgia as its head coach a year later.
Vitello’s philosophies on the game and personality intrigued Posey and aligned with what the future Hall of Famer hopes to build in San Francisco, sources said. In an interview with ESPN in June, Vitello said his reputation as a rabble-rouser did not bother him and that he had no plans to change his approach to coaching, which called for boundary-pushing.
“I think you don’t know where the line is until you cross it. And then you make an adjustment,” Vitello said. “I don’t want our guys, if they give them a coloring book, I don’t want them just coloring inside the lines. You know, come up with something different.”
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