LAS VEGAS – Since the San Francisco Giants‘ season ended, Tony Vitello hasn’t gone one week without getting on an airplane.
And he may not stop moving until the baseball season begins – whenever that may be, pending a lockout.
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Vitello went back to his old stomping grounds in Knoxville to watch the Tennessee football team bully Alabama, and on Halloween night was just feet away from head coach Lincoln Riley on the USC football sideline when they beat Ohio State.
Between college game days he took a breather with friends in Carmel, where the gang would trek during their days coaching in Salinas. Last week Vitello was parked in the Seattle Seahawks’ suite, secretly rooting for his Chicago Bears on Monday night. Two days later he was roaming the Golden State Valkyries‘ championship parade in San Francisco.
He flew to Arizona and camped out at Papago to watch prospects and big leaguers alike get back on the field; for those in their hometowns, Vitello has a list of players he’ll visit individually.
First on that list was a trip to New York to see outfielder Harrison Bader, whose pay the Giants suspended when he got into a late-night scooter crash in San Francisco’s Marina District. Bader played just 30 games in 2026, dealing with plantar fasciitis that the accident worsened.
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“I don’t mean to speak too much for him, but I also don’t mind saying, I think he feels a sense of duty,” Vitello said, just before the general managers meetings kicked off at the Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. “Last year didn’t go the way he wanted performance-wise when he was on the field, and no player wants to be injured. And I think he’s in a pretty good head space for how motivated he is going into next year.
“I think a lot of guys have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder based off last year – for different reasons.”
Count Vitello among those with a chip.
Around this time last year, the Giants made history by hiring Vitello straight out of the college ranks. His first year at the helm was turbulent, just as the Giants’ season was; the team lost 97 games and looked out of sorts from the jump as Vitello navigated the realities of managing a professional baseball team. As the team plummeted, his decision-making came under scrutiny and his long-winded explanations lacked the clarity to get the spotlight off his back.
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How a Giants team built to contend spiraled into a near-historically bad season boils down to a basic conclusion from Vitello and those up top: The team just needs to play better baseball and prevent more runs. The 2026 season flew off the rails because no one was truly on the same page on Opening Day.
Abstractly, that kind of directive puts an onus on its leaders in the front office and in the clubhouse. Vitello was hired in part because of his standout leadership at the college level that didn’t fully translate to the pro game in Year 1. The fire often spilled over as he led the National League with seven ejections, but the team didn’t seem to feed off his energy until late, when young players replaced the injured veterans.
When the season ended, Vitello realized he needed to learn how to manage a new feeling: losing. Not just the scrutiny, but the mindset that comes with persevering through loss. A relatively foreign concept, since over eight years at Tennessee he suffered just 131 of them.
There’s a method to his high-mileage offseason that’s meant to address that.
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After the GM meetings in Las Vegas, Vitello will continue his college football tour in the land of the Southeastern Conference. Why football?
“I just think football coaches are the craziest human beings in the world because if we go on a bad losing streak, it’s a big story for you all (the media) and it’s time to really reflect,” Vitello, donning a red San Francisco 49ers cap, said from a bench in the hallways of the Aria.
“Those guys lose one game, and the world is coming to an end. You spend all that week preparing. You get little to no sleep. You executed almost everything in the game, but one mistake by somebody could have such a massive impact.”
Vitello’s next stop will take him to LSU when the Tigers host Texas this weekend.
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There’s a reason he’s headed to Baton Rouge. He’s there to see LSU coach Lane Kiffin, who endured scrutiny and a harsh media spotlight throughout his long football coaching career. No worse than his abrupt departure from Ole Miss for the LSU job.
Vitello and Kiffin have bonded over their Tennessee ties; now Vitello wants to know how Kiffin handles the SEC life.
Vitello compares the Giants and MLB fandom to that of SEC football – almost a religious experience, he’s come to learn. Fans care in a way much different than college baseball.
“I think in the South (football) is a religion for everybody,” Vitello said. “But it also comes with a heavy, heavy burden. I think college baseball has gotten pretty insane, which is good. But I think football is a little more comparable to other pro sports, whether it’s college or NFL, of just the burden these players have to carry.
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“And to be honest, I don’t need sympathy, but that’s on the coaching staff, too.”
After visiting Kiffin, Vitello will head back to Knoxville to shadow Vols coach Josh Heupel and the assistant coaches he knows well. He’s grown close with 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and hopes to observe one of their practices under the Santa Clara sun – or perhaps tag along for a game to watch Shanahan and his staff at work.
What the college football tour has taught Vitello so far is the power of organization. That’s a lesson he wants to carry over into next year.
“I think just more structure and more organization from our end,” asked his reflections on last season. “Whether it’s the way we are as coaches, just behind closed doors, or things we do with the players – having more checkpoints to say this is how we want to play.”
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He imagines the 2027 Giants’ objectives on an index card with four bullet points: throwing strikes with presence and attitude, tightening late-game management, trusting the entire lineup to produce, and keeping up defensive focus.
That starts with the coaching staff, which has shifted already with hitting coach Hunter Mense’s departure to the Kansas City Royals. It’s expected that the Giants will retain their pitching coaching staff despite their woes on the mound in 2026.
It’s not all on Vitello. The look of the roster will need to change, and the front office is on the hook to do it with a possible lockout and potential for a CBA that changes the scope of roster construction.
The Giants will need to add significantly to their pitching staff. The rotation is practically bare behind Logan Webb, and the late-game execution would benefit with an anointed closer and defined bullpen roles.
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With many young pitchers far off or injured, Vitello acknowledged that internal options won’t suffice and they’ll need to look externally this offseason at a strong free agent list that includes Tarik Skubal, Michael King, Sonny Gray, Freddy Peralta and relievers Adrian Morejon, David Bednar and Sean Newcomb.
The CBA expiration on Dec. 1 may force them to act quicker to sign guys, if that’s the move.
“I think the unknown has kind of got everybody’s heart beating,” Vitello said. “Not a sense of urgency and definitely not panic, but your heartbeat’s kind of going one or two more beats per minute or whatever it might be, because you just see the end of the road a little quicker.
“We’re no different than any 30 clubs. Everybody wants to get their pitching better.”
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The position player group doesn’t require much change, but less reliance on big-money players Rafael Devers, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman to carry the weight. Bryce Eldridge‘s emergence could balance the scales.
“I think position-player-wise, we have an outstanding group,” Vitello said. “You never know what’s going to happen, you know, if someone’s going to move for some reason or something like that, or something becomes available that’s too good to pass up.”
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This article originally published at Why is Giants’ Tony Vitello on a vision quest in SEC football country? ‘A heavy, heavy burden’.
