The worst moments of Tony Vitello's first 40 games as SF Giants manager, ranked

Everyone expected Tony Vitello to face a learning curve. Jumping from the college ranks to managing an MLB team, let alone one with legitimate playoff aspirations, had literally never been done before, and there was bound to be some bumps in the road along the way.

And yet ... well, there are bumps, and then there's getting stuck in a ditch a mile away from your house and being unable to get out. Just about everything that could go wrong in San Francisco has gone wrong — both with the Giants on the field and with Vitello's performance in the dugout. The team is stuck in fourth place in the NL West at 16-24 entering play on Monday, while their manager is busy being unable to communicate which pitcher he wants brought in from the bullpen.

But somehow, that's not even the most embarrassing thing he's done in his first month-plus on the job! To prove it, we've created the following exhaustive list.

6. Name-checking Kanye West in the year of our lord 2026

I can't rank this too highly on the list, primarily because it doesn't have much of anything to do with his team's performance on the field. But it feels like it says something about something that Vitello tried to explain away San Francisco's slow start by bringing up Kanye.

"If you ask Kanye — I think he’s out with a new album — if you try hard, you die hard," Vitello told reporters last month. "Strange fellow, but he don’t miss much on the music, not that you asked.”

"Strange fellow" is ... certainly a way to put it! And yes, no one asked. There were so, so many normal ways to respond to this question, and yet Vitello decided to go way out of his way to make another unnecessary headline. And this is the guy who's supposed to keep a big-league clubhouse together?

5. Comparing Rafael Devers to Tiger Woods ... immediately after Tiger Woods' DUI arrest

At least the Kanye snafu was a victimless crime. But his choice of analogy when asked about Rafael Devers' struggles at the plate definitely couldn't have made his most expensive hitter feel good:

When you have to trail off mid-sentence for fear of sticking your foot in your mouth any more, you know you've done something special. For context, the above quote came on April 3, just a week or so after Woods had been arrested on suspicion of DUI after a car crash near his home in Florida. And this was the first man who came to mind when trying to instill confidence in Devers moving forward. OK then!

4. Failing to specify which reliever he wanted brought into the game

I know we already touched on this one above, but seriously: It's one thing to be a loose cannon in front of a microphone, but it's another thing to lose your grip on the most basic tasks of being a manager. And this isn't something you can explain away due to lack of experience! Presumably he made a lot of bullpen changes in the past at Tennessee.

3. Leaving a righty in to face Kyle Schwarber (and Bryce Harper) with the game on the line

Thank god, some actual baseball strategy to criticize. It would be one thing if Vitello were a mad scientist as a tactician, but he seems to combine his penchant for PR gaffes with bog-standard bullpen mistakes. Case in point: With Kyle Schwarber up and the tying run on third with two outs in the ninth inning of a game against the Phillies in late April, Vitello chose to keep righty Keaton Winn in the game rather than going to the lefty he had ready to go. The result? A double, of course.

"Just how (Winn) was throwing the ball to the last hitter," Vitello said when asked about the decision. "He's been in the fire out there. It's a difficult decision, and if it goes well, right answer. If it doesn't, wrong answer."

Never mind that Schwarber is substantially worse against lefties, or that Winn was in his second inning of work for the first time all year.

2. Picking a passive-aggressive fight with local media in his first press conference of spring training

Given all the skepticism that surrounded Vitello's hiring, making a good first impression was paramount. You just knew that any perceived slip-up, any sign that he might not be cut out for this, was going to be pounced on. Which is why it was so strange that Vitello decided to antagonize Giants media for no particular reason in the middle of February.

“Somebody tweeted it out," Vitello said, amid criticism of how he felt his departure from Tennessee was reported. "I don’t know who told them. I wish I did. It might have changed the course of history if I’d known who did.”

Changed the course of history? Even if you had a point, that would be hyperbolic, but the fact that you're really just trying to distract from you interview for another job while still gainfully employed just makes the whole thing worse. Maybe we should've seen all the rest of this coming.

1. Chalking up an Opening Weekend sweep to his players being 'too emotional'

This still feels like the canary in the coal mine, though. After getting swept by the Yankees in their first series of the year, Vitello attempted to calm everybody down ... in the most counterproductive way imaginable. Rather than simply preaching patience, he went on a long and winding journey in which he said his team had been "too emotional" upon hearing the impassioned speech he gave them ahead of first pitch on Opening Day. The notion was immediately shot down by the veterans in the Giants' clubhouse, because of course it was — and even if it were true, do you really think these grown men would appreciate that implication being made publicly? It was the first sign that Vitello didn't really understand what it meant to be an MLB manager, but it certainly hasn't been the last.

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