Umpires' mistreatment of SF Giants manager Tony Vitello has become embarrassing

One of the more unfortunate themes of the 2026 season for the SF Giants has been the way umpires have treated rookie manager Tony Vitello. It’s clear that many of them have little to no respect for Vitello and there was more evidence of that on Saturday against the New York Mets.

Vitello went out to talk to the umpires after they ruled that Turner Hill did not get hit by a pitch and that the ball actually hit his bat which is not how it looked on the replay. Despite the review, the call stood and basically right after Vitello got out of the dugout to discuss the matter he got ejected.

After the game, Vitello pointed out the absurdity of the way umpires have treated him recently:

“Last week I was ejected and told I was ejected because I didn’t come out of the dugout and talk. Had someone from the umpiring association tell me I should just walk out. And so, I walked out without any fire in me just to explain what was coming out of our dugout, and to calm the situation and got thrown out for walking out of the dugout.”

So he gets tossed if he argues from the dugout and also gets tossed if he comes out of the dugout to argue. Got it.

These umpires seemingly just do not want Vitello to speak at all which shows how little they think of him. It’s an embarrassing look for these umpires who clearly get off on some sort of power trip by behaving this way. A day after Vitello got ejected last week, Ron Wotus also got ejected while giving the lineup card because of how poorly the umpire had called the game the night before.

Automated balls and strikes have already been introduced into the game and it seems fairly inevitable at this point that slowly more and more umpiring decisions are going to be automated. The foul ball call that got Vitello ejected last week is surely something that can be reviewed using some sort of tracking technology and there’s no reason to think we won’t someday have a completely automated strike zone with no home plate umpire.

Umpires have looked really bad lately in MLB

Perhaps the umpires know this and they are just choosing to lash out, but it probably doesn’t help their cause if they are wrongfully ejecting managers in very thin-skinned fashion.

This comes after an incident in St. Louis recently where an umpire told a rookie Cardinals pitcher to straighten his cap on the mound. Stuff like that is just power-hungry and a terrible look.

Umpires do have a hard job, and one can understand why they may not have a ton of patience for managers or players arguing with them, especially ones with no professional baseball experience prior to this year like Vitello.

Still, they need to be held accountable for their actions as well and Saturday’s ejection of Vitello just provides even more embarrassment for the institution as a whole.

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