SAN FRANCISCO — No moves a manager makes will be scrutinized as heavily or as frequently as the daily decisions when it comes to his bullpen.
So far, Tony Vitello has mostly skated scot-free.
He hasn’t tried to signal for a reliever despite nobody warming, a la Gabe Kapler during his first games leading the Phillies. And he hasn’t called for a reliever whose name wasn’t on the lineup card, like Kapler did in his second try at managing with the Giants.
Whatever performance issues there have been — and they have been abundant — fall less on the manager than the hand of cards he was dealt by his bosses upstairs in the front office.
As far as optics go, the first-year manager’s worst sin had been causing a little confusion during one change, leading bullpen coach Jesse Chavez to shrug both hands above his shoulders.
That is, until this week.
Keaton Winn was placed on the injured list Sunday with a strain in his right elbow, with the Giants calling up Tristan Beck to take his place in the bullpen.
Winn hadn’t appeared in a game since Vitello summoned him for a third contest in a row Monday night, surrendering three runs in the ninth of a 4-3 loss. The decision, it would appear, not only cost the Giants the game but came with more dire consequences.
After all, this isn’t college baseball, where coaches regularly ride their best pitchers until their arms fall off. This is Major League Baseball, where each arm comes with a seven-figure insurance policy and pitchers’ health is closely managed like the commodities they are.
However, it doesn’t all fall on Vitello’s shoulders. This was an organizational failure.
Winn, first and foremost, gave Vitello the green light to use him for a third game in a row, even though it was something he had never done before in the minors or as a big leaguer.
Club sources also said nobody among the coaching or medical staff relayed any concerns to Vitello about Winn’s availability that night in their daily pregame meeting.
Logan Webb, who was at 99 pitches and firing on all cylinders, didn’t demand the ball for the ninth, despite flying ahead of the club as one of the only players to avoid a 4 a.m. arrival from Chicago that morning. He would later privately express regret about not being more assertive when Vitello approached him about the ninth, another club source said.
While the Giants were optimistic that Winn would not require more than “a handful of days down, at the most,” per Vitello, the right-hander has experienced elbow problems in the past as a pro, including Tommy John surgery in 2021 and another procedure that ended his 2024 season.
It’s not hard to draw a straight line from Winn’s heavy workload and the decision to call on him for a third day in a row to the elbow discomfort that cropped up in the days since.
Any regrets from Vitello, however, had more to do with the three runs Winn surrendered in the loss than whatever possible effect the outing had on his health.
“I think more than anything we just wish we would have done anything differently to win the game,” Vitello said. “Anytime we have a guy that’s available down there, it means he’s available to go and feels good to go.”
Before every game, Vitello holds a meeting with his pitching coaches and medical staff to determine who is and isn’t available that day. Winn, in the past, has passed along when he wasn’t feeling physically up to pitch, but he didn’t raise any issues Monday, Vitello said.
One arm that was ruled out through the pregame process was Caleb Kilian, who had also pitched the previous two games in Chicago — but had only thrown 23 pitches between them, compared to 41 exhausted by Winn in the same games.
While Kilian became the first to be formally named the closer by Vitello on Friday, Winn had been regarded as the Giants’ closer internally up until his Monday outing, a club source said.
“At the end of the game, if we got to him, that’s who we were going to use,” Vitello said.
The decision came down to asking Winn to push his body to new limits or Webb to push his pitch count into uncomfortable territory in only his third start back from the injured list.
Vitello asked Webb: “Are you good?”
Webb responded: “It’s up to you. It’s your decision.”
A manager is only as good as the players on his roster and the information at his disposal, but part of the job also means being the one to bear the brunt of the blame when decisions go awry.
Vitello was asked if he saw a correlation between Winn’s usage and his elbow pain.
“I think part of it is the nature of the split-finger, to be honest with you,” he said.
It’s impossible to know whether Webb would have been able to go the distance, though the smart money is on yes. Either way, Winn was put in a position he wasn’t able to handle.
Now, the Giants can only sit and wait and hope a third elbow surgery isn’t in his future.