SAN FRANCISCO — New Giants manager Tony Vitello has a message for the fan base on his first day of work:

He has no idea how this is going to go.

“I wish I had an answer in my own head to be honest with you,” Vitello said. “Because as I first got here, I was like, man, there are a lot of unknowns.”

There sure are.

Vitello is the first manager in big league history to jump directly from a college baseball dugout — he was previously the manager at the University of Tennessee — to the highest level of the game. He’s trading aluminum bats and partial scholarships for $200-million payrolls and stadiums that hold six times the people as his former home ballpark.

Perhaps this jump was unprecedented for a reason.

But, as Vitello said, “We’re in this together now, whether you like me or not.”

And truth be told, it was hard not to like the guy upon the Bay Area’s first impression.

Thursday was, in effect, a public job interview for Vitello. When you come in facing the level of skepticism that naturally follows someone who is on his untrodden path, an introduction takes on a more inquisitive tone.

But in his 40-plus minutes on the dais at Oracle Park, Vitello didn’t touch any of the hallmarks of the last two managerial press conferences the Giants have held: analytics and fundamentals.

No, instead, the talk was of trust, confidence and culture.

And while Buster Posey and Vitello did spend an inordinate amount of time describing and then rephrasing that description of what managers are expected to do, an underlying truth cut through:

Vitello is a people person — confident in himself but not threatened by other ways of going about things.

“One of my most important responsibilities in this role is to be able to read a room and read people. I don’t always get it right, but I feel like I have a pretty good sense of that,” Posey said. “I think with any hiring, there’s going to be a certain level of risk.”

Known for his fiery personality and borderline-viral moments at Tennessee (can anything in college baseball truly reach the mainstream?), Vitello came across as intelligent, thoughtful, and, most importantly, authentic.

And he didn’t win a contest to land this job, either.

“As much as this feels out of the box, Tony’s name has been bouncing around Major League Baseball for a while,” Giants general manager Zack Minasian said. “Tennessee’s program has been top-notch. … You get a sense for how he goes about it — his passion, his intellect. … We kept coming back to (him).”

This might not work. There are more reasons to explain why it won’t than why it will. And the risk? Even Posey admits that’s significant here.

But Vitello is the kind of personality that makes you comfortable with the risk. It’s easy to see why he was such a great recruiter at Tennessee and why he is beloved not only in that state, but in clubhouses all over the big leagues where his former Volunteers now play.

My goodness, he is a far cry from Gabe Kapler, whose insecurity was his guiding force.

And what a departure from Bob Melvin, who tried to make no waves, lest he remind someone that he was, in fact, being paid millions to manage a big league baseball team.

The Giants are perennial underperformers; there’s no reason San Francisco’s recent peers are the small-market Cardinals, Diamondbacks and Reds. They need to be up there with the big-market Dodgers, Phillies and Mets.

But the calling card of this organization has been to avoid losing too many games rather than trying to win more. And that philosophy has locked in mediocrity on the field.

Posey is still incredibly green in his job, but to his credit, he has made move after move to counter that institutional malaise.

And this, more so than even the Rafael Devers trade, is the move that could fundamentally change things in the Bay.

For better or for worse.

“We believe his leadership is not only going to impact our clubhouse, but it’s also going to impact our entire organization and fan base,” Posey said.

Good.

Fire can be destructive or cleansing. Either way, something is burning.

And if that makes you uncomfortable, I have to ask: What do the Giants have to lose here? What is being held onto so dearly?

Vitello’s Tennessee teams played with an edge. While in that role, he has said that “in between the lines there are no rules” and compared his team to UFC fighters. It’s a big, irreverent gesture to the pearl-clutching traditionalists who constantly claim baseball needs to be played according to an unwritten code.

It’s a group that has been placated by the Giants for too long.

No more.

“He’s going to be OK with ruffling feathers,” Posey said upon leaving the dais. “There’s an argument to be made that we’re lacking that severely right now. All the young players won’t like me, but I don’t like guys hugging (players on the other team) before the game. I don’t like it. As a fan, I want there to be a little bit of friction at times.”

Posey will have just that.

Kapler desperately wanted to be liked, and Melvin just wanted to stay out of the way; Vitello doesn’t care if he’s hated, so long as his team has his back.

He was born to be the villain.

Perhaps the feathers ruffled are with the Giants players themselves. We’ll find out if that’s the case — and if this is a failed experiment — in short order.

But if Vitello can rally his squad to play baseball his way — bold, brash, and prepared to a point of excess as to back it all up — the Giants will develop something they haven’t had in a long, long time:

An identity.

The Giants will be the most hated team in baseball.

And that will be a rousing success.

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