Can San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello learn how to lose?

For the top college programs, a typical regular season features 56 games, or about one-third of an MLB regular season. So each individual showdown quite literally means more within the context of an entire year. A single college ballgame can carry the emotion, win or loss, of a big-league sweep. Two bad weeks can torpedo a club’s playoff chances.

This was all amplified in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference, where Vitello spent nearly his entire coaching tenure. If MLB’s regular season is about quality emerging over a large sample, SEC ball is about complete and total domination. Blink, and you’ve lost.

That means Vitello is used to acting aggressively and weaponizing his unshakable enthusiasm to animate his ballclub. But while that strategy worked wonders, won championships and turned him into a coaching icon, it’s not easily replicable at the big-league ball.

“You want to make adjustments that are needed,” he explained of whether he has had to be more patient in his new role. “The games technically mean a little less. So to make a drastic move, in college, when there's fewer games, might make sense. With this, it’s not necessarily do or die. We can maybe make this change, but let’s not go crazy with this or that.

“It damn sure is a challenge.”

Amid the shorter college campaign, there’s an urge to search for meaning under every stone. But these days, Vitello is learning that not every MLB result comes with a larger lesson attached. After San Francisco was carved apart by Yankees pitching in the season’s opening series, Vitello pondered about his lineup being tight. The explanation for the Giants’ lackluster performance is likely much simpler: Sometimes Max Fried and Cam Schlittler shove, and there’s not much the opposing offense can do.

Vitello was similarly assertive after San Francisco’s loss on Sunday, one that wrapped up a road trip with a 4-5 record. “And it’s a long season, and blah, blah, blah, sample size, all that crap,” he said before insisting: “4-5 and 5-4 is a massive, massive difference.”

During media sessions, Vitello is blunt, long-winded, refreshingly philosophical and occasionally combative in a way that college head coaches often are but MLB managers usually are not. Freely referencing soft factors such as energy and clubhouse chemistry, emotion and culture, it’s clear that San Francisco’s skipper views the sport through a different lens.

That is why, despite Vitello’s unfamiliarity with MLB, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey plucked him from the college ranks. He offers something different; he is a legitimate zag. Few question Vitello’s work ethic, baseball knowledge or people skills. And his high-energy behavior has the potential to be infectious and invigorating over a long season. Before Saturday’s game against the Nationals, Vitello shadowboxed in the dugout with outfielder Drew Gilbert, whom he also coached at Tennessee. Other Giants players, many of whom did not play college ball, are beginning to adapt to their new normal.

Vitello will have to do the same, meeting his players somewhere in the middle.

“[The players] love baseball,” he told Yahoo Sports’ Jordan Shusterman during spring training. “They like the camaraderie factor. They want to have success. They want to be helped. So, you know, as everyone harps on all these differences for my job or what's going on, or people ask me, ‘What's the biggest difference?’ … There's a lot of similarities.

“And I kind of take comfort in that.”