Excitement in the manager's office

We better not have to hear Rocky Top though

Two years ago, when the Giants hired Bob Melvin, it felt like a boring, predictable pick from a franchise that had no real ambition. Sure, you could say, “The last time the Giants hired a veteran Padres manager who was still under contract but the team wanted to get rid of, it worked pretty well,” but Melvin was obviously a retread, hired to appease a season ticket base who blamed Gabe Kapler’s wacky newfangled platoons and openers for the organization’s doldrums.

Then the organization had two more years of doldrums. Whoops! Better try something else, right?

Well, hello to Tony Vitello. Whatever you think about the move, you have to admit that he is unequivocally something else.

A couple weeks ago, when all signs were pointing to Nick Hundley as the new manager, I wasn’t thrilled about it. My argument wasn’t that we knew Hundley would be a bad manager — Hundley has never been a professional coach of any kind, so who’s to say whether he would be good or bad? — but that he was a symbol of the Giants looking inward. “I played with that guy and I liked him and he seemed managerish,” Buster Posey was perhaps saying to himself. “So I made him manager.”

But then, Posey didn’t make Hundley manager. A large part of that seems to be Hundley removing himself from consideration for the same reason he did last time: he has kids who need him to take care of them and he doesn’t want to uproot his life for the grueling schedule of a major league season.

So who did the Giants end up hiring? World Series Champion¹ Tony Vitello, straight from the University of Tennessee.

Vitello is the first college manager to ever jump straight to a manager job in the big leagues, and he’s done it without any professional experience of any kind. He was never a major league player, never a minor league player, never an indy league player, never even a coach at any professional level. He played baseball in college, and since then he has been an assistant coach in a college summer league, an assistant coach in college, and a head coach in college. In a quarter century of playing and coaching, none of it has come at a professional level.

So you can see how this can all go wrong. Dealing with grown multi-millionaire adults is a much different proposition than dealing with early 20s college students. There is no guarantee that any of his skills will transfer, that he’ll know how to motivate men with extremely different motivations than the ones he’s been dealing with, that he has the right temperament to do the major league job. It’s a reasonable reaction to look at this extremely outside-the-box hire and say, “I mean, there’s a reason we have a box.”

But what if it works?

After the previous couple of paragraphs, that seems like an inadequate justification, but those flaws are also the biggest thing in the plus side of the ledger for the hire. Vitello is different. His background is different. He’ll relate to players differently, think differently, act differently. He is not the tried-and-true boring baseball guy who thinks like every other baseball guy you’ve seen in the majors over your lifetime.

Well, I guess I shouldn’t overpraise the guy without ever seeing him manage a game, so: he might not be the same tried-and-true baseball guy who thinks like every other baseball guy you’ve seen in the majors over your lifetime. There is an excellent chance that Vitello will relate to players differently, think differently, act differently. As much as we can assume anyone will be different before seeing him do the job, we can assume that Vitello is different.

That’s why Buster Posey hired him. That’s why it is an interesting and exciting move. A staid, boring hire would have ensured that the Giants remained a staid, boring franchise. They needed to mix things up. They needed someone who could bring the energy the team lacked during the first month after the All-Star Break. They needed someone who would motivate players in a way they might listen to, speak to them in language they aren’t used to hearing, lead them in ways they aren’t used to being led.

The Giants chose an outsider, not just to the team, not just to the organization or the division, but to Major League Baseball. They chose someone who would bring them something that no one else had. “That’s an exciting hire” is a very different statement from “This will definitely work,” but that’s an exciting hire. This team will not stay the course. This team will be different. I think that’s what everyone wanted to see this offseason: proof that the Giants were going to change.

As much as a manager can be that proof, that’s what Tony Vitello is, and that’s what makes this hire, and the team, intriguing in a way we haven’t seen in a very long time.

1. Okay, sure, College World Series Champion, but that’s a version of World Series Champion, when you think about it