New Giants manager Tony Vitello working to get his club on track after frustrating 3-7 start
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Lately, Tony Vitello has been apologizing to his own family for how San Francisco is playing, and when they have a chance to go out for dinner everybody is used to his mind still being on baseball and little else. There's been a lot of thinking to do given the new Giants manager's frustrating 3-7 start in his jump from college coach to the major leagues . Vitello had a little extra time following Sunday afternoon's game with a night contest the next day to ponder everything that went wrong in San Francisco's third straight defeat, when he was ejected for the first time in his career for arguing in the seventh after Jerar Encarnación was ruled out for running inside the designated lane on his way to first base.
Yes, he constantly dissects the various decisions he makes and is determined to figure this out. “At 3-7 and how yesterday went, I didn't think yesterday was the proper time for me to go gallivanting around San Francisco, so, yeah, I was in my condo the whole night,” Vitello said. “Whether I'm there or sitting with family I apologize to them, ‘Find something better to watch if you’re watching this.
' We're at dinner, I am thinking about this more than that. So, yeah, yesterday sitting at home you finish on a day game and you have a night game, you've got a lot of time to go over that stuff. You replay it all.
” Before the start of a new series Monday against the Philadelphia Phillies, Vitello and Matt Chapman connected to discuss the third baseman getting caught stealing after his leadoff single in the ninth inning of a 5-2 loss to the Mets that gave New York a weekend sweep. Vitello knows those kinds of mistakes would be more magnified later in the season, and said the Giants are “trying” so hard to win "it's probably something that everybody's been a little guilty of, of not going about it the way they would if they were thinking clearly but when you're trying to win games as hard as possible sometimes it actually contradicts what your end goal is. ” Coming into Monday's game, the Giants had been outscored by 25 runs over their initial 10 contests — the worst mark through 10 games for the franchise since it was minus-49 in 1896.
And the club's 3-7 record was tied for its second-worst through 10 games since moving to San Francisco in 1958 — the Giants began 2-8 in 1983. Chapman, for one, hopes a few things will go the Giants' way so they can grab some much-needed momentum to climb their way up in the powerful NL West after falling to the bottom of the standings, and he is thankful the struggles are happening now when there is plenty of time left. San Francisco has missed the playoffs the past four years.
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