Giants manager Tony Vitello explains why Drew Gilbert became a fan favorite originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Tony Vitello didn’t need long to explain why Giants outfielder Drew Gilbert already has become a fan favorite in San Francisco.
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Vitello, who coached Gilbert at Tennessee before taking over in San Francisco, joined NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic on the latest “Giants Talk” podcast and broke down the energy and competitiveness that made the former Volunteer star a foundational player for him then — and a natural fit with Giants fans now.
“I think it’s easy to see how much he wants to win,” Vitello told Pavlovic. “If you pay for a ticket to go to the game, you want to see a win… so you want that equal kind of give from the players. And with Drew, because he wears his emotions on his sleeve so much, you’ll never doubt it.”
Vitello said Gilbert’s emotional transparency — the intensity, the reactions, the way he carries himself — creates a rare connection.
“There’s other players too that there’s as much give, but you just don’t see it as much,” Vitello added. “For him, you have that visual — the way he plays, the emotion he plays with — and it can really affect the locker room. I think that’s his strength. It’ll never leave.”
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Now that the two are reunited at the big-league level, Vitello said Gilbert is focused on continuing to round out his game so he can “stand the test of time” in MLB.
And while Vitello has watched a lot of players move on from Tennessee, following Gilbert’s rise in San Francisco became something of an event inside the program.
“The coolest thing is when guys come back to work out or train with us, or see a game,” Vitello noted. “But second place to that is us being able to follow them and see them. We don’t get to look at box scores every day … but when it’s news that’s as loud or as exciting as it was with Drew, it kind of captivated the whole underbelly of our stadium for a while.”
Now, Vitello won’t have to follow from afar.
