Are Joe Torre and the Dodgers About to Choke Away the NL West Title?

Just one win. That’s all Joe Torre and the Los Angeles Dodgers needed this week in order to clinch the NL West title. Five games – and five losses – later, the Dodgers are still waiting to open that champagne.

Despite being in first place since mid-April, and having held a six-game lead only a week ago, Los Angeles faces the very real possibility of losing the NL West title to the surging Colorado Rockies.  And if they do lose that title, it’s about time that Torre gets some blame for having yet another one of his teams choke when the heat was on.

Unlike the 2004 Yankees, who, under Torre’s watch had the worst collapse in playoff history when they lost to the Red Sox in the ALCS after being up 3-0, the Dodgers have already clinched a playoff berth. But the team could end up losing home field advantage for the next two rounds of the playoffs if they don’t win Saturday and Sunday. The Dodgers have lost five in a row this week, to the Pirates, Padres, and now the Rockies, and have only scored five runs in their last four games. The team has also been 1 for their last 19 with runners in scoring position. Not exactly a confidence-inspring week.

And, as I have previously written, staggering into the postseason doesn’t mean that a team will fail then. However, the Dodgers haven’t just had a bad September. They’ve really been mediocre for four months now. In April and May, the Dodgers went a sizzling 35-17. Since then, they’ve gone 58-50, with a middling 37-35 record in the second half of the season.

And now the Rockies, who were once 15 1/2 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West, are knocking on LA’s door. Ever since former Dodger manager Jim Tracy took over the then-18-28 Rockies from Clint Hurdle in last May, Colorado has gone an incredible 74-40 (20-9 since August 31). They are now just one game out of first after they beat the Dodgers Friday night in the opener of their final series of the season. If the Rockies can win the next two games, they will complete the biggest comeback ever in regular-season baseball history.

How much have the Dodgers fallen? According to MLB.com, no team has ever “led its division or league from May 10 or earlier until the final week and lost it,” but now the Dodgers – and the Detroit Tigers – are both “in position to make that dubious history” this weekend. But the Tigers never held more than a 7-game lead over the Twins.

So Torre ought to be very thankful there’s a wild card in baseball to ensure his team’s spot in the postseason. And that Manny Ramirez appears to be taking the Designated Scapegoat role held by Alex Rodriguez with Torre’s Yankee playoff failures.

Manny is an easy target – his overall numbers, while still respectable, have sagged in the 76 games since he was suspended for 50 games for violating MLB’s PED policy. He has gone .270, with 13 homers and 42 RI, .391 OBP and .496 slugging.

But those stats are not anything like the numbers he had in his first 80 regular series games as a Dodger, where Manny went an incredible .380, with 23 homers, 73 RBI,  an OBP of .490 and a .710 slugging percentage. And, as he struggles down the stretch, the same fans who once cheered Mannywood are now jeering him – Ramirez was vociferously booed by Dodgers fans throughout his four-strikeout game Friday night.

However, much like how the Yankees would never have made the playoffs in 2005 and 2007 if it weren’t for A-Rod’s two MVP seasons, Torre and the Dodgers wouldn’t have sniffed the postseason in either 2008 or 2009 without Manny being Manny. The Dodgers were literally a .500 team before Ramirez was traded from the Red Sox, and they got off to such a hot start this year thanks to his hot bat.

Really, Manny is just one part of the problems befelling the Dodgers. Just like he did in New York, Torre has mismanaged the LA bullpen and overworked certain arms. And even though Torre admitted that the team was “flat” a week ago, he’s done nothing to get the Dodgers revved up since then, an all-too-familiar feeling for anybody who watched Torre snooze in the dugout with the Yankees while his team sleepwalked through the playoffs in the last few years of his tenure in the Bronx. Yes, Torre is a calming influence in the clubhouse, but sometimes it’s all too calming.

Although Torre invariably gets the credit when things go right, he never seems to get blamed when things go wrong. There is little chance that, if the Dodgers lose the NL West this weekend, Teflon Torre will get the blame. Winning those four rings seems to have bought him a lifetime pass from media criticism, even though some of his postseason decisions, starting with pitching Jeff Weaver in the 2003 World Series, have been inexplicable. From not being aggressive with the Red Sox in 2004 (no bunting on Curt Schilling’s bad ankle, no running on Jason Varitek when he couldn’t catch Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball) to not taking his team off the field when a swarm of midges attacked Joba Chamberlain in the 2007 ALDS, Torre has been all too complacent in recent years in crunch time.

True, Torre did a good job with the Dodgers in 2008, where he was more attentive in the playoffs than he had been in eons. But now it  seems that he is up to his old tricks again.

So what will Torre do if the Dodgers lose to the Rockies on Saturday? Don’t be surprised if Torre bats Manny Ramirez eighth in the regular-season finale, like he did with A-Rod in the 2006 ALDS, just to make sure the media knows who Torre wants to get the blame for the possible loss of the division title.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

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