Atlanta Braves Top 10 Managers in History:: Number 9 Joe Torre
The Atlanta Braves inducted Joe Torre into the club’s hall of fame as a player, but he was also a successful manager in Atlanta. Ten years after Lum Harris left, the number nine manager on my list took over.
Prologue
Atlanta Braves vice president of player personnel Paul Richards was a brilliant field manager who became an equally brilliant general manager. The Braves hired him after Astros owner Judge Roy Hofheinz allowed personal pride to overcome common sense and fired him.
While Richards improved the franchise, he also made one of the worst mistakes in its history. According to his SABR biography, Richards was one of the loudest and most reactionary anti-union voices, and Torre was the Braves player representative and a vocal union supporter.
Torre’s SABR biography says his support of the union didn’t sit well with Braves’ ownership and reflected their displeasure by offering Torre a contract with a 20% pay cut. Richards tried to trade him to Washington and the Mets before eventually sending him to St Louis for Orlando Cepeda.
From player to manager
After a borderline Hall of Fame career as a player, the Mets made Torre their player/ manager on May 30, 1977. Torre stopped playing on June 17 but remained as manager of the Mets until 1981.
No one could call his time in Queens a success; the club finished sixth of six in his first three seasons and fifth in the final two. Torre ended his time as Mets manager with a 286-420 record and a .405 W/L %,
Meanwhile, the Torre-less Braves followed their 1969 surge by sinking like a rock to the depths of the NL West. Over the next 13 seasons, the Braves finished as far out of first as 40 games in 1975
The split season in 1981 saw them finish fifth overall in the NL West, 15 games behind the Reds.
In an interview after the Mets fired him, New York Times reporter Ira Berkow asked Torre if he wanted to manage again,
“Yes, I plan to keep doing it until I get it right.”
Braves’ leadership wanted a change and believed Torre would get it right. Fourteen years after trading him to St Louis, Joe Torre returned to Atlanta to replace Bobby Cox.
Atlanta Braves’ fast start
Torre had the Atlanta Braves fired up to start the year. They came out of the gate with 13 consecutive wins after
Claudell Washington’stwo-out, two-run walk-off single to beat the Reds and take a four-game lead in the NL West.
Reality returned with a five-game losing streak that ended with a tenth-inning walk-off win after Bucs shortstop Dale Berra couldn’t handle a ball off the bat of pinch-hitter Bob Watson.
The Braves ended April with a 16-5 record and a two-game lead in the West.
After ending May with a four-game losing streak, Atlanta caught fire again starting June by winning 12 of the first 15, and went on to post an 18-9 June, but were only three games ahead in the West.
A fight to the finish
The Atlanta Braves ended June by winning two in a row from Houston and won the first four games in July to go 4.5 games up in the division. On July 29, they beat the Padres in Atlanta to stretch their lead to nine games, their biggest lead of the season.
The Braves’ lead quickly vanished as they lost 19 of their next 21 and dropped four games back in second place. They bounced back on August 19, beating the Expos 5-4, then they:
- swept the Mets in three straight,
- took two of three from the Phillies,
- went to Shea Stadium, swept the Mets again, and
- took three of four in Philadelphia.
That run moved the Braves into a 2.5 game lead, but once again, it didn’t last.
Thank you San Francisco
The Atlanta Braves went 9-4 and dropped to second, and on September 17, sat 3.5 behind the Dodgers. Fortunately for the Braves, the Dodgers’ sworn enemy stepped up. Over the next 15 games, the Giants won:
- Six against the Dodgers,
- Two against the Astros,
- and two against the Reds, but
- lost two games to Atlanta
The Braves won the West by a game over the Dodgers and two games over the Giants.
Glen Hubbard told the Miami Herald that Torre never let heads drop.
“Even during our losing streak, he could have come out and blasted us, but he didn’t. Nobody was breaking any bats or helmets. He just helped keep us confident, and we came back.”
The Atlanta Braves returned to the NLCS for the first time since 1969, but like the Mets in ’69, the Cardinals swept a tired Braves team and went on to win the World Series.
Onward but not Upward
The Atlanta Braves started 1983 in what looked like a replay of 1982. Torre’s team took 13 of the first 16 and finished April 14-5, a half-game up in the division. They remained on top until slipping into second place after losing to Houston on May 5,
The early difference between 1982 and 1983 was their play in June. The Braves went 16-13 in June, good for a .552 W/L%, but it wasn’t the 18-9 boost they received in 1982. They improved towards the end of the month and took the division lead on July 4.
Atlanta remained in first through July, and after beating the Giants on August 4, they were 25 games over 500 at 67-42, the first time the franchise reached that mark since the Milwaukee Braves finished 30 games over on September 28, 1968.
On August 15, the Atlanta Braves lost their cleanup man Bob Horner to a wrist injury. The Braves kept their division lead until August 28, when they slipped a half-game back of the Dodgers. Missing Horner’s bat. The Braves posted an 11-16 September. The club finished the year with one less win than 1982 at 88-74, but four games behind the Dodgers in second.
1984
Torre’s team started 1984 slowly. They finished 9-12 in April but clawed their way back over 500 in May and grabbed first for seven days in June. The team had no break-out months like the ones that pushed them within striking distance in the last two years.
The lineup lacked punch; apart from Murphy and Washington, no one slugged over Hubbard’s .380 or hit more than nine home runs. Fortunately, the pitching was good enough to help to an 80-82 finish.
Baseball’s standard operating procedure dictated that someone had to go, and since John Mullen wasn’t going to fire himself, he fired Torre.
Epilogue
Torre moved into the broadcast booth in 1985 and stayed until Whitey Herzog resigned 104 games into the 1990 season. Torre’s team posted a winning 331-327 record from 1991 through the strike season of 1994 but never finished in the money.
The Cardinals fired him 47 games into the 1995 season, and Atlanta Braves fans know what happened in New York over the next 11 seasons, and in his three seasons with LA.
That’s a wrap
In 1985, the Atlanta Braves realized John Mullin wasn’t the answer as GM and brought back the man Torre replaced as field manager in 1982 as their general manager, Bobby Cox.
Number 10 - Lum Harris. dark. Next
We’ll never know what might have happened had Richards kept Torre in ’68, or the Braves had not fired him in 1985. We do know that Torre posted winning records throughout his career as a manager and was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a manager in 2014.