On Friday October 17, 2025, MLB.com’s Kansas City Royals reporter Anne Rogers reported that the San Francisco Giants interviewed Royals third base coach Vance Wilson for their open managerial position.
Wilson is probably the most under-the-radar candidate the Giants have interviewed for the position. President of Baseball Operations Buster Posey’s candidate list has comprised mostly of well-known recently retired MLB stars, former Giants coaches and experienced managers who were recently with another team.
Wilson is also expected to be a candidate for the Minnesota Twins’ managerial opening, according to Rogers. The Twins have him on their interview list.
Unsurprisingly, Vance Wilson is a former catcher, which is clearly a preferred quality among Buster Posey’s managerial candidates. Posey is, of course, a former catcher himself and won three World Series championships with the Giants at that position.
He played parts of 8 MLB seasons with the New York Mets and Detroit Tigers. In 403 career games, he hit .250 with 25 career home runs and 129 RBI.
After he retired from professional baseball in 2010, the Royals hired Wilson as the manager of the Kane County Cougars, their single-A affiliate.
Wilson managed in the Royals’ minor league system with the Cougars, Wilmington Blue Rocks and Northwest Arkansas Naturals from 2011-2017.
In 2018, he joined the Royals’ MLB staff and served as the bullpen coach for two seasons. In 2020, he became the Royals’ third base coach and has served in that role ever since.
Wilson represents an experienced option for the Giants given all of his minor league managing and MLB assistant coaching experience. But, he is also somewhat of an unknown commodity, given that no one knows how he will perform managing an MLB team.
It sounds like Giants fans will learn who their new manager is soon. Longtime Bay Area sports insider Tim Kawakami of the San Francisco Standard is hearing that news could come imminently.
“Sounds like there could be Giants managerial news pretty soon,” Kawakami wrote in a post on X on Saturday October 18, 2025. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.”
The Giants could be waiting for the break between the two league championship series and the World Series to announce the news so that it makes maximum waves in the baseball community. The Los Angeles Dodgers clinched the National League pennant on Friday October 17, 2025 with a 4-0 sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Seattle Mariners are up 3-2 on the Toronto Blue Jays in the ALCS. That series could end Sunday October 19 if the Mariners win, if not, it will be over on Monday October 20, 2025 after Game 7.
If Kawakami thinks news of the Giants’ new manager could come soon, that means they probably have already decided who to hire. And unless there’s a secret candidate that the Giants interviewed that the beat writers did not find out about, it’s probably someone who was confirmed to interview with the Giants already.
Giants fans, who do you think will be the next skipper in San Francisco? Will it be Vance Wilson, or someone else?
