Joe Maddon sounds off on Giants’ ‘insulting’ managerial hire

Joe Maddon doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Giants’ hiring Tony Vitello as their next manager. 

In fact, the World Series-winning skipper called the hire “insulting” since Vitello has had no previous experience coaching at the professional level. 

Maddon made the remark on Tuesday while appearing on KNBR 680’s “Murph & Markus” when he was asked about the hire. 

Maddon, who has not managed in Major League Baseball since 2022, seemed to take issue with the fact that Vitello had not paid his dues to earn the job. 

Joe Maddon of the Chicago Cubs looks on after the spring training game against the Cleveland Indians at Sloan Park on February 26, 2017 in Mesa, Arizona. Getty Images

Vitello was hired away from the University of Tennessee. 

“Quite frankly, I’m using the word insulting only from the perspective that it appears as though you don’t have to have any kind of experience on a professional level to do this job anymore,” Maddon said during the radio appearance. 

“When I was coming up, you had to have all that. You had to, like, go through the minor leagues. You had to ride buses. I was a scout. I started in 1981. I finally get a managerial job in 2006. I mean, there was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point. So to think that somebody could just jump in there and do it, you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to do, it is kind of insulting.”

Vitello was a rising star in the college baseball ranks and had coaching stops at Missouri, TCU and Arkansas before Tennessee.

He coached the Volunteers to six NCAA Regionals and three College World Series appearances over the last five seasons, which also included the Volunteers winning their first national championship in 2024. 

New San Francisco Giants’ manager Tony Vitello smiles while flanked by President of Baseball Operations’ Buster Posey and General Manager Zack Minasian during introductory press conference at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. AP

Maddon, who managed the Rays, Cubs and Angels, did seem to like some of what he’s seen of Vitello, but painted the hire as part of a greater societal shift, even drawing a comparison to the recent New York mayoral election that saw Democrat-socialist Zohran Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo for the job. 

“Now having said that, the next part is, I wish him nothing but the best, because I watch videos of the guy and I can actually understand why it’s perceived that he’s ready to do something like this,” Maddon said. “I guess the overarching point is, in today’s world, prerequisites to get jobs of this caliber, even jobs like the Mayor job of New York City now, it doesn’t require the years of experience that you may have had to have gone through in the past. I think communication skills, perceived leadership skills, those are the kind of things that become more valid or important and not necessarily having kind of like, internal knowledge, working knowledge of the craft at hand, which would be Major League Baseball or running a city.

“It’s not just baseball, it permeates throughout the entire world right now.”

Maddon managed the Rays from 2006 to 2014 before going to Chicago, where he led the Cubs from 2015-19 and helped them win the World Series in 2016. 

He was the Angels’ manager from 2020-22.