The San Francisco Giants are gambling that former Tennessee coach Tony Vitello can get them back into the playoffs and go after a World Series.
It’s a curious hire. No MLB team has entrusted the manager’s chair to a college coach with no pro baseball experience as a player or coach in recent memory. On paper, there is little connection between Vitello, a Missouri native who has spent his entire baseball career in the Midwest and south, and Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey, the Georgia native who played his entire MLB career on the west coast.
So, how did this happen? Vitello said little about the “how” as he read a statement to the media earlier this week. Posey hasn’t yet publicly commented.
Until the pair talk about the how, it’s entirely possible that Vitello is the new Giants manager thanks to part to Icon Racing, a horse racing team partnered by two Major League players, Jayson Werth and Shawn Kelley.
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During their podcast in a Tik Tok clip on Off the Rail, Kelley explained what happened.
Werth played 11 seasons in the Majors and helped the Philadelphia Phillies win the 2008 World Series. While playing minor league baseball in Kentucky, he became enamored with horse racing and spent time at the legendary Churchill Downs, the home of the Kentucky Derby, in Louisville.
After he retired, he moved into horse racing ownership and helped form Icon Racing. One of his horses, Dornoch, won the Belmont Stakes in 2024. He has also had horses in the other Triple Crown races the past two years.
Werth is one of the founders and partners in Icon. Kelley, who pitched for six Major League teams in a decade-long career and is a native of Louisville, Ky., is a partner in Icon. Another founder and partner in Icon is Jeff Berry, an Owensboro, Ky., native, former MLB agent and — since late last year — a special advisor to Posey.
And that’s where one gets into the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon stuff,” as Kelley explained to Werth, who called Vitello an “Off the Rail podcast contributor.”
“Our partner, Jeff Berry, he’s a special assistant to Buster and Jeff and I kind of talked,” Kelley said. “I knew Tony well. He had an idea. He wanted a rock star to come in and change the culture in the Giants and do something different.”
Kelley then joked that he would be the new pitching coach and Werth would be the new hitting coach.
Hiring Vitello is different — and risky for Posey and the Giants. If it works, the payoff could be massive, not just for the Giants but for other college coaches around the country.
Vitello takes over the Giants after spending eight seasons at Tennessee, where he spent eight seasons rebuilding the Volunteers into one of the best baseball programs in NCAA Division I. That reached a zenith in 2024 when he guided Tennessee to 60 wins and the Men’s College World Series championship in 2024. He also took the program to the MCWS in 2021 and 2023. He also led the program to two SEC regular-season and tournament championships.
Before that, the collegiate infielder at Missouri was an assistant coach at Missouri, TCU and Arkansas.
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