San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello. Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Giants' Tony Vitello era gets off to historically poor start

By Adam Gretz | Last updated Mar 27, 2026 9:05 PM ET

The Tony Vitello era for the San Francisco Giants is certainly off to a historic start. It is just not the good kind of history. The Giants have not only lost their first two games of the season to the New York Yankees, but they have done so in rather futile fashion.

Giants make wrong kind of history with another shutout loss to Yankees

After dropping their season-opener to the Yankees by a 7-0 margin on Wednesday night, the Giants followed that up on Friday with a 3-0 loss.

While being shut out in the first two games of the season is bad enough, what makes it even worse is the Giants have barely been able to even get a hit.

Or a base-runner.

After getting just three hits in the season-opener, they followed that up with just one hit on Friday.

That makes them the first team in Major League Baseball history to score zero runs and have fewer than five hits in the first two games of a season.

Giants are first team ever to score 0 runs and have 5 or fewer hits combined in first 2 games of a season.
— Josh Dubow (@JoshDubowAP) March 27, 2026

During Friday's game, the Giants had just three base-runners total, and only had two at-bats with runners in scoring position.

The second of those at-bats came with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning when Matt Chapman drew a walk off Yankees closer David Bednar, then proceeded to advance to third base on two defensive indifferences (stolen bases without an attempt to throw him out).

The Giants won 81 games a year ago, and after adding Luis Arraez and Harrison Bader during the offseason, they should be expecting to compete for a playoff spot. They still might, and two games does not define anything about how their season is going to go, but it is still a pretty underwhelming start.

Adam Gretz

Adam Gretz is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh. He covers the NHL, NFL, MLB and NBA. Baseball is his favorite sport -- he is nearly halfway through his goal of seeing a game in every MLB ballpark. Catch him on X @AGretz

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