SF Giants beat writer openly muses Tony Vitello may not make it through 2026 season

The SF Giants are 22-34 on the season. One could try to wax poetic on how bad things have been but it feels a little useless at this point. The Giants are just not a good baseball team. Things have gotten so bad that Giants beat writer Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic openly mused in his most recent column that manager Tony Vitello may not even make it through the season.

Baggarly was writing about the possibility of Ron Wotus taking over full-time third base coach duties from Hector Borg, who has faced a ton of criticism for his mistakes as third base coach this season, and then dropped this line:

“Or heck, if this whole thing goes sideways and the coaching staff loses all remaining credibility, would Wotus be a candidate to run the whole show on an interim basis?”

This seems to be Baggarly just speculating, or maybe even venting, and not based on any sort of real plan to ax Vitello and replace him with Wotus. Still, it is a sad state of affairs when there is already chatter about a rookie manager being let go and it’s not even the end of May.

The interesting thing is that Vitello has not gotten the lion’s share of the blame for the disaster this season has been. For the most part fans seem to be more upset at ownership or president of baseball operations Buster Posey and the front office. 

It makes sense since Posey is the one who hired Vitello and he is ultimately responsible for the players on the roster so the buck truly stops with him.

But what must Vitello be thinking amidst this start? He’s said all the right things and has accepted blame at every downward turn, but he left a plum job at the University of Tennessee where he was treated like a king for this?

There has to be part of him wishing he was back in Knoxville right now. 

Is there a scenario in which the Giants fire Vitello iin 2026?

It’s doubtful the Giants would fire him midseason unless things got really bad. There haven’t been any reports that Vitello has completely lost the clubhouse or anything like that but the product on the field has been sloppy and hard to watch.

Vitello has at least been entertaining through it all, providing memorable and quirky quotes during postgame press conferences but that charm doesn’t quite hit so hard when the team is 12 games below .500.

Perhaps Vitello will end up being one-and-done and will be remembered the same way San Francisco 49ers fans remember Jim Tomsula who lasted one season back in 2015. Tomsula seemed like a nice enough guy but he was just clearly in over his head and was given a lackluster roster.

Maybe Vitello and the Giants will just choose to mutually part ways and admit that this experiment didn’t work out. Vitello could head back to Knoxville and the Giants could look for yet another new manager but it’s fair to wonder who would be foolish enough to want to manage the team after such a train-wreck of a season assuming they don’t turn things around.

It's unlikely Vitello will be gone before the end of the season, but the fact that a respected beat writer is openly musing about the possibility shows just how dire things have gotten in San Francisco.

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