Dodgers-Phillies: Joe Torre Compounds Blunders by Ignoring Matchups

Joe Torre is a Hall of Fame manager.

Take that to the bank. Play the Lottery with it. Bet the mortgage. Use your wife and kids as collateral, if you like. It’s as sure a thing as the Earth being a spheroid (a trifle flat at the poles), our Sun being ridiculously hot, divorce rates being on the rise, and our President’s approval ratings being on the decrease.

Just reporting the facts here, people.

Now, I didn’t say whether or not Joe Torre deserves to be a HoFer based on his managerial career. That’s an article for another day. His 2,246 wins, four World Series titles in five years, as well as six AL pennants in eight years are pretty hard to argue with.

But let him keep making such fundamentally poor decisions as he did last night in an 8-6 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies and yours truly promises to write that article on a day in the not-too-distant future, as a companion piece to the one calling for the Dodgers’ manager’s head on a platter.

The problem that I have with Torre is this: he picks odd times to eschew the idea of “playing by the numbers,” all in the name of managing by (choose whichever of these banal expressions you prefer) “feel,” “gut,” or “instinct/intuition.”

Last night, he just seemed to manage senile.

Typically, as Dodger Featured Columinsts, PJ Ross and I try to touch on entirely different aspects about the Dodgers. However, even though Peej wrote about Torre’s decision-making in last night’s game with this brilliant article, we both agreed that it would be appropriate to amplify just how monumentally bad some of the moves were.

In the fifth inning, Clayton Kershaw allowed a Raul Ibanez single to left, and wild-pitched him to second. He then walked Pedro Feliz and allowed a three-run jack to Carlos Ruiz to the Mannywood seats in the left-field corner.

I wanted to pull him then. The “feel/gut/instinctive/intuitive” manager certainly would have done just that. However, I do agree with the “buttress his confidence” angle by allowing the lad to pitch to the pitcher’s spot in the order.

Kershaw, though, the 21-year old fireballer with a 12-to-6 curve and a proclivity for wildness, then walked the opposing pitcher on four offerings to turn the lineup over for the Philadelphia Phillies.

I was screaming for a reliever by then.

Keep in mind, Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino are switch-hitters (and good ones), so it really didn’t matter (from a platoon standpoint) who was on the mound when they appeared at the plate. The decision on whom to face them was largely irrelevant, except from the standpoint of “does the pitcher on the mound need to be there?”

My contention is that Kershaw did not need to be toeing the rubber.

So really, at this point, Joe Torre should have been managing two batters ahead instead of just living in the moment. He should have been preparing for the Chase Utley-Ryan Howard duo who were likely to come to the plate, unless a double play ensued.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?