Tony Vitello Describes His First Giants Spring Training Camp in One Word

For Tony Vitello, every day brings something new.

When you’re a college baseball coach, there’s a rhythm to what is done every day. The same thing applies to being a Major League Baseball manager. That’s part of the adjustment for Vitello, who spent his entire coaching career in the college ranks before he took over San Francisco as manager in November.

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Each day he gets a little bit closer to managing his first regular season game at Oracle Park, which will be on March 25 against the New York Yankees. With two weeks of spring training under his belt, he’s past the getting to know his players phase of spring training and he’s onto the player evaluation portion.

But that doesn’t mean he’s taking it all in. Every single day, every little bit. After all, he’s only a rookie manager once.

Tony Vitello on Spring Training

After coaching at the college level for over 20 years, Tony Vitello is ready for a new challenge!

The @SFGiants manager discusses his first MLB camp and the talented infield at his disposal.

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During an interview with MLB Network, Vitello was asked to describe his first spring training, and he summed it up in one word, though he did manage to cheat just a bit.

“Fun but different — you only gave me one word so I'm going to put different in front of the fun,” he said. “Obviously I've never experienced it before, but the similarities are there with the baseball part and everything. But it's just there's a lot more people, there's more fields, there's a lot more variables. So, it's been a learning experience.”

He went on to talk about the experience of having several fields to monitor as manager. That is, perhaps, one of the biggest differences from his time at Tennessee.

“You’d like to see everything, because eventually you're going to have to make educated guesses or maybe wise decisions,” he said. “Those are based off observations and communicating with coaches and you get spread a little bit more thin than you usually are when there's just the one stadium field you're used to in college. Maybe it’s the recruiting background, I don't like missing stuff.”

Vitello takes over the Giants after spending eight seasons at Tennessee, where he spent eight seasons rebuilding the Volunteers into one of the best baseball programs in NCAA Division I. That reached a zenith in 2024 when he guided Tennessee to 60 wins and the Men’s College World Series championship in 2024. He also took the program to the MCWS in 2021 and 2023. He also led the program to two SEC regular-season and tournament championships.