Dodgers Manager Joe Torre on Manny Ramirez
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Below are a few tidbits from Dodgers Manager Joe Torre’s meeting with reporters before the game on Friday night.
Asked if Manny Ramirez was set to start upon his return from a 50-game suspension, Torre deflected the question, saying:
“That’s going to have to come out of a different department. I’m not at liberty to tell you anything, because there’s really nothing that we know for sure until something happens. … It’s going to have to come from someone higher than I am, probably from the [public relations] people.”
The PR folks might be wondering when a potential pay raise would kick in. (Torre is under a three-year, $13-million deal he signed in 2007.)
The response sent reporters laughing.
Asked if Ramirez’s suspension was a benefit to other players, Torre said:
“Even when Manny was down, we felt -- or at least I felt -- don’t try to do anything more than what you’re doing. We have a lineup that -- for the first month and a half, maybe more -- we had Casey Blake batting eighth. So you’re talking about a lineup with that kind of length to it –- you have a guy coming off the bench when Manny was not available for us to be Juan Pierre, a guy a couple of years played 162 games -- so we’ve been pretty lucky to have the quality that we’ve had. Even to the point of [Brad] Ausmus and [Juan] Castro and [Mark] Loretta, and these guys who’ve been regulars in the past, being a part of our bench group. So it did not surprise me that we’ve done well. I think the fact that we haven’t scored a lot of runs is a product of Manny not being here because he certainly makes us better. He certainly keeps these guys from thinking, ‘I have to do it, I have to do it, I have to do it.’ When he’s here, he’s certainly that threat that makes people around him better aside from his own ability.”
Asked if he had any advice to give Manny for his upcoming rehab assignment, Torre replied:
“I don’t think I need to give him [Ramirez] any advice. Everywhere he goes -- we’re going to New York, once he gets activated anyway. San Diego and New York. And, you know the fact that he played for Boston for eight years, or seven plus years I think it is -- he just understands that whether he could handle it or not, it’s not a shock to him. I think that’s the big thing. So I don’t think I could give him any advice. I think he understands that, you know, he’s been pretty good because a lot of places he’ll get booed, he’ll get cheered. But it’s mainly booed because that’s usually what they do to good players when you go to different fields, ball clubs. So he has a way of locking in, and I think he understands what he has to do during these at-bats wherever it happens to be. Whatever it is, it’s certainly going to be minor compared to what he’s going to have to face when we go to New York.”
Torre, who earned his 2,195th managerial win Thursday to pass Sparky Anderson for fifth all-time, was asked if he received a congratulatory phone call from the Hall-of-Fame manager.
“No. He may have tried. I don’t know.”
Torre is the all-time winningest manager in interleague play, collecting 123 victories.
Torre on Dodgers right-handed starting pitcher Chad Billingsley:
“The one thing you know you’re going to get from him is, whether he has good stuff or bad stuff or command or lack of command, he’s going to go out there and battle your rear-end -- that I could be assured of. This kid has come a long way since the spring of ’08 when I first saw him. You know at that time that it was all in there. And he has done nothing but work as hard as he can every time he gets the ball in his hand.”
-- Mario Aguirre