SEATTLE — When Tony Vitello walked out to home plate this weekend inside T-Mobile Park to exchange lineup cards, he wasn’t the only participant who was a college coach this time last year.
The first-year Giants manager had some company in the Mariners’ first-year field coordinator.
“I’ve admired him for years,” said Jake McKinley, the former University of Nevada coach who began charting his path to the big leagues in the Bay Area, first as a player at Bethany College in Santa Cruz, then as a coach at West Valley College in Saratoga and later Menlo College.
McKinley, who grew up outside Sacramento going to games at Oracle Park, nearly worked for a different Giants manager. He was working on the player development side of the Brewers’ front office when the Giants requested permission to interview him for a position on Gabe Kapler’s staff. Milwaukee said no, putting him on a parallel path to San Francisco’s current skipper.
“I was just like, Tony, man, I want to chat with you. Because we both made the same jump. I know he jumped into the manager role, but to go from college baseball to the big leagues — that’s a huge jump, and I just want to hear his perspective on it.”
The two had never previously crossed paths, outside of the occasional recruiting battle that Vitello’s Vols usually won. Quentin Eberhardt, one of two coaches on Vitello’s staff at Tennessee to follow him to San Francisco, was a mutual connection.
Home plate wasn’t the most conducive setting for a conversation. But Vitello appreciated seeing another product of the college game’s infiltration at the highest level.
“I think the umpires were not annoyed that we were going on and on, and it was time to get going with the game,” Vitello joked. “But we were talking college stuff.”
McKinley, 41, was named to manager Dan Wilson’s staff about a month after Vitello, 47, made the unprecedented leap to leave Knoxville for the managerial post in San Francisco.
It didn’t influence his decision, but the move caught his eye.
He had interviewed for an open manager’s job the previous offseason.
“I didn’t get it, but I got kind of far in the process,” McKinley said. “So when that team had reached out to me to interview for the manager job, I was like OK, at some point there’s gonna be a college coach that makes the jump. Obviously I hoped it was me. But when it ended up being Tony, on paper, it made sense. But I think you’re going to see a trend of that.”
The experiment to hire a manager straight from the college ranks was unprecedented. But, clearly, the idea had been batted around MLB front offices before Giants general manager Zack Minasian threw out Vitello’s name in the process to replace Bob Melvin.
Now, almost two-thirds into the first year of this never-done-before endeavor, McKinley is able to provide a unique perspective from someone making the same transition, only in a lower-profile role. He transformed Nevada into a fringe top-25 program after taking over in 2022.
Vitello’s team, 42-56 entering Sunday, has been profoundly disappointing. His players have underperformed, but the rookie manager has also endured some growing pains.
Still, McKinley believes other teams won’t be dissuaded from dipping into Division I again.
“You just get this really versatile skill set that I think is really applicable here,” he said.
In college, there was a “real day-to-day investment in teaching,” and not only baseball. McKinley taught his players “really transferable life skills” — the proper way to shake hands, how to tip wait staff — that major league players have little time or desire to learn.
“The more you teach those and bang that drum, the better your culture is,” he said. Whereas in the big leagues, “the perspective is they’re at the highest level and they’re a finished product.”
Navigating the marathon that is a 162-game schedule has been an adjustment for both coaches coming from the 56-game sprint of a college season. Vitello has lamented the challenge it has been to get his team on the same page with all of his players on their own schedules.
“A lot of the decisions you make with your personnel, the decisions you’re making in April, you’ve gotta be sure it puts you in a good position late in the year,” McKinley said. “And you’ve gotta toe that line of I’ve gotta go win the game in front of me, but at the same time I’ve got to have my team in a position to be successful for the long haul.”
Vitello ran into that issue early in the year, chasing wins that didn’t materialize and hampering his bullpen’s availability for the following games. In college, McKinley said, teams rarely deviate from their typical starting lineup, pitching rotation and best bullpen arms.
There’s more fluidity — and thus a need for clear communication — at the MLB level. That has often been a pain point for the Giants, particularly in the bullpen, under Vitello.
“It’s actually not as different as I thought,” McKinley said. “It’s just the barrier to entry and earning trust is a little more challenging at this level. But once you do, it’s the same game.”
The two main things teams wanted to know during his interview process: How would he go about establishing a winning culture among professional players? And what would his thought process be when presented in-game situations that required some strategy?
You can presume Vitello faced a similar line of questioning.
“It was a lot of feeling out if I could run a game,” McKinley said. “This pocket of hitters is coming up, how do you manage your bullpen? How do you foster and maintain a good culture inside of your walls? Not just for your players, but the staff and support staff. But at the same time, how can you routinely make decisions that puts the organization in position to win?
“It was just about: Can you help us win major league games?”
McKinley said he misses California and still hopes to manage in the major leagues someday. Field coordinator jobs often are a springboard to bigger responsibilities. It would be a more traditional path than the one Vitello took to become the Giants’ 40th manager.
“I’m obviously rooting for him as a lifelong college coach for him to have success,” McKinley said. “Competence is competence. If you can coach, then I think these guys can see that.”
