Torre Loves Manny

There’s a clip on mlb.com of Manny arriving in LA, being escorted around first by the owners, then Tommy Lasorda, and lastly by Joe Torre. It’s one thing to see Lasorda greeting Manny, and another thing entirely to see Torre and Manny sharing the love. Forget about the incongruity of seeing two old adversaries arm in arm, two icons of baseball’s greatest rivalry now teaming up together. The bigger question is, who’s better than Torre at managing a mercurial and often outsized ego like Manny’s?

With his arm around Manny, Torre introduces him to the kids in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, Manny needing no introduction to the veterans. At one point, conversation turns to Manny’s new number – 99. Torre explains, “That’s how many RBIs he’ll have from now until the end of the season.” At his current pace, that’s probably not too far off the mark, as Manny has nine RBIs in his first seven games wearing Dodger blue.

So Joe loves Manny, and from where he sits, what’s not to love? LA has the best team ERA in the NL, having allowed the fewest runs so far this year. But the Dodgers’ batting average is a paltry .258. They are 13^th in the NL in runs, and RBIs, and 15^th in home runs. That’s 15^th, even including the four homers Manny’s hit in his first seven games. The Dodgers are playing .500 ball, but are only a half-game out of first place in the NL West, in the loss column. Plus, they’re playing .500 in one-run games, so it seems to me that a home run here and there, a couple timely extra-base hits, and the Dodgers should be able to pull ahead of the Diamondbacks and see some October play.

Meanwhile, the Sox took their second series in a row, winning two out of three in KC. I know that the Royals are lousy, but all year long the Sox have been dropping road series to lousy teams. By my rough count they have won only six of nineteen road series this year, and are playing seven games under .500 as they head into Chicago for a four-game series with the White Sox. So forget about the Rays, and the Yankees; the real test is whether the Sox can win on the road over the last month and a half of 2008. If so, maybe they’ll get to meet the Angels once again in October, but they’ll have to play without the guy who owns K-Rod. He’ll be wearing 99 for the Dodgers.