Matt Sayles / AP

In taking over as the Dodgers manager, Joe Torre will be aided by his outstanding knack for dealing with the different personalities of his players, writes Bert Blyleven.

Still loving his line of work
Torre continues to have a burning desire to manage. That’s why after walking away from the Yankees when they offered him a one-year contract worth $5 million plus $3 million in performance bonuses – an offer he termed "an insult" – it took him just two weeks to make Los Angeles his new baseball home by signing a three-year, $13 million contract to manage the Dodgers.

Torre’s not going to change his managerial style much if at all with his new team. He’s crafted a blueprint for success and he’s going to continue to follow it. The Dodgers will hear from him that it’s not only a new season, but that there’s a new leader of this ballclub who expects from them effort and loyalty. He won’t have to tell them about his being a winner. Unless they’ve been living in a cave the last decade or so they’ll know that by now.

As a former player I know from experience that when a team changes managers, they’ll be a period of transition as players get a feel for the personality of the new man in the dugout and he likewise gets a sense of the nature and temperament of each of those on his roster. But players usually don’t change how they go about preparing and playing the game just because someone new is making out the lineup card.

Changing leagues no big deal
Moving over to the National League isn’t a factor for Torre after his managerial stints with the Mets, Braves and Cardinals. His knowledge of the game will be even more of an asset as he goes about making moves in games that are played without a designated hitter. Strategically, he’ll do more managing in the NL than in the AL, but he probably likes that fact rather than disliking it.

Since their World Series win in 1988, the Dodgers have gone into many a new season with high expectations only to finish up with disappointing results. Torre knows that and while I don’t believe he’s feeling any more pressure to succeed with the Dodgers than he did with the Yankees – after all in New York he had to deal with George Steinbrenner – he understands winning is very important to the franchise for which he now works.

First up on the list of challenges facing Torre is restoring team unity. That should not be all that difficult to achieve given the way he goes about his business with his players. An even bigger undertaking will be to put a product on the field that will make everyone in the Dodgers organization proud. That’s what Torre has talked about doing, and that’s something management is betting he can deliver on.

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