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SAN FRANCISCO — Outside the visitors’ clubhouse in Miami this past Sunday, in front of the temporary backdrop the Giants’ PR department hauls with them on the road, I was struck by a sense of deja vu.
There was Tony Vitello, giving almost an identical answer to a similar question I had asked a little over a month earlier. How, as a first-year manager, would he hold to account one of his highly paid, highly prideful Giants veteran leaders very publicly misbehaving?
What Rafael Devers did in the ninth inning of the loss to the Marlins was a little different than Willy Adames’ embarrassing act in Los Angeles. You can debate the merits for which was worse: Paying more attention to a conversation with Mookie Betts than the number of outs, or trying to shoo away a teammate and at least giving the perception of undermining his manager.
In neither case did it set the example a team should want from two of its most important players, whose performance has earned them no benefit of the doubt, to boot.
Both times, Vitello passed on the chance to air them out publicly.
Did he feel the need to talk to Devers after he tried to refuse to come out of the game for a pinch-runner, despite being both the tying run and the slowest runner on the Giants’ roster?
“No, we talk every day,” Vitello said. “I’m good. … I don’t have any problem with Rafi.”
Back in May, in the underbelly of Dodger Stadium, in front of the same small, black backdrop, I asked Vitello if he felt he needed to take any actions to hold Adames accountable for the brainfart that resulted in him getting doubled up at second base in a loss to their chief rivals.
“As far as?” the manager responded.
Earlier, he had opted to defend Adames.
“There’s no sense in dwelling on it,” he said. “We all know Willy. He’s always intense. He’s always going to play with high energy. He’s always going to play aggressively. I don’t know if that played into it.”
One of the biggest questions when Buster Posey decided to dip into the college ranks to hire the Giants’ next manager was just how the national championship-winning coach with no pro experience would adapt from handling 18- to-22-year-old amateurs to multimillionaire professionals with more service time — and job security — than himself.
Posey recalled a situation with Bruce Bochy and Santiago Casilla when the reliever got a little too emotional and showed his displeasure over coming out of the game.
“I don’t ever recall Boch sitting a guy in one of those cases, and I think we all feel he’s one of the best managers to ever do it,” Posey said. “I’m not saying it couldn’t be effective, but I think it depends on your personnel as much as anything.”
As far as his current personnel, Posey put his full faith behind Vitello’s handling of the clubhouse.
“I feel like Tony has the clubhouse. I think he has the respect of the players in the clubhouse,” Posey said. “Everything’s going to be heightened when our record is what it is. But there’s no concern on my part that he doesn’t have the respect of the clubhouse.”
In spring training, everybody said the right things when I surveyed a large portion of the clubhouse on the early stages of that transition. Vitello, all along, has said he has been embraced with open arms. But one response stuck out to me as curious.
Multiple sources touted Vitello as being the right fit because of his ability to lead young talent.
That’s simply not the state of the Giants’ roster.
Despite its record, this is a team in win-now mode.
The players most responsible for their fate — Adames, Devers, Matt Chapman, Luis Arraez, even Logan Webb — have all been around the block.
After Devers’ antics, it was fair to wonder about their level of buy-in.
He did no favors to himself or Vitello when he declined to explain himself after the loss in Miami but eventually did put his full confidence behind the manager two days later.
“It wasn’t meant for me to be disrespectful to him,” Devers said in Spanish through a team interpreter. “I think he’s a great person, as a manager and a person. Obviously he’s getting a lot of experience. But we all respect and will just continue doing the things that he wants and having him lead us.”
The two hashed things out on the six-hour flight back from Miami, a conversation Devers initiated by apologizing to the skipper. Vitello said the gesture was “needed,” describing it as a “great talk.”
In an appearance Wednesday on KNBR, longtime Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow said the moment with Devers, in the wake of being swept by the Marlins and enshrouded in the Pride Night fiasco, was a “huge test” for Vitello. He called it the first-year manager’s “finest moment.”
“He was being looked upon very, very intensely by everybody on that team as to how he was going to handle the Devers situation,” Krukow said. “… Devers went up to the first-class section where the manager sits and he sat down with Tony Vitello and they had a long talk. Everybody on that plane watched it. Everybody watched him go from the back of the plane to the front of the plane, and they all knew where he was going and not anybody knew what would happen.
“He came back, got back in his seat and the response was he was going to have a press conference.”
Maybe Vitello isn’t comfortable criticizing his highest-profile players publicly. Apparently, he prefers to handle his business behind closed doors.
“You walk into the Giants clubhouse yesterday and that team was ready to play,” Krukow said. “… They were put back together by Vitello.”
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