By Brian Murphy
Tony Vitello’s Giants are currently on pace to win 66 games, and lose 96.
Just the way we like it.
Hey oh!
This week’s Jock Blog was set out to explore the idea of Tony Vitello returning as Giants manager in 2027 — as reported by veteran scribe John Shea —so the Jock Blog did some cursory research to find out just how bad losing 96 games in one’s maiden voyage truly is.
The results are a little nutty.
Did you know that Baseball Hall of Fame inductee and World Series champ Bobby Cox lost 93 games in his first season managing the Braves? And lost 94 in his second season?
Did you know that local deity Bruce Bochy only had two winning seasons in his first nine years, and even lost 96 games and 98 games in his first nine campaigns?
And how about New York icon Joe Torre, for whom grown men weep when he passes? Torre managed the Mets and in his first full three seasons of 1978-80 lost 96 games, 99 games and 95 games. Dude.
Somewhere, Gabe Kapler wants to call a tribunal to review his time as Giants manager.
Listen, the Jock Blog is not saying that Tony V will morph into a hybrid of Bobby Cox/Bruce Bochy/Joe Torre, although that would be a helluva hybrid.
What the Jock Blog is saying is that terrible seasons happen, particularly with bad rosters. And that good seasons can happen, particularly when rosters get better.
And Tony Vitello probably should get another crack at this.
Mostly, for reasons of stability.
If Buster Posey is going to do this thing for the next few years, his vision needs more than two seasons. If his vision was that Vitello would inject relatively youthful energy to his club, we saw none of that in 2026. The presumption or hope would be that Tony V 2.0 would be a more assertive and intense presence than a guy who spent his rookie season fumbling for the light switch.
Bad seasons happen. Even terrible seasons happen. See above on Torre/Cox/Bochy.
Posey was even a player on some bad Giants teams. Bochy and Posey lost 98 games in 2017, and even had losing seasons in 2013 (the year after a championship) and 2018 and 2019. It isn’t all sunshine, roses and two-out RBI knocks, sports fans.
So he knows this stuff happens. It happens more often when you go into the season with no quality bullpen arms, but that’s another Jock Blog for another day.
This screed is not to excuse Tony V’s many missteps this year. Just today, he foolishly challenged a Steven Kwan slide, and lost a challenge for no good reason. And we could go on: bullpen missteps like pitching Keaton Winn three consecutive days; failure to assert authority over veterans and force rest days for slumping Willy Adames; not running enough; getting clowned by umpires anytime he cropped out of the dugout. That’s just a starter set.
It was a super risky hire. The Jock Blog said last year that ultimate trust was placed in Buster Posey, and a year later, that trust has taken some dings. But we need to see what Vitello can do on a larger scale. Right now, the skeptics who doubted his hire are looking mighty prescient.
The only way out is to win. It’s quite possible that the rise of young players the Giants want to carry the next decade — from teenagers like Josuar Gonzalez and Jhonny Level to twenty somethings like Bryce Eldridge, Jackson Flora and Tugboat Wilkinson — will be the faces of a Tony V era at Oracle Park.
If that’s the case, he may need more than just 2027 to fully flower. And maybe that’s the kind of patience that is required.
Just ask Joe Torre.
