There are still many Joe Torre diehards lurking about town. It’s not surprising given just how long he managed the Yankees and how successful he was. One is reminded of the country’s shock when Franklin Roosevelt died in office in 1945. For many, he was the only president they had ever known. As such, one still sees and hears the occasional talk-radio or online muttering that Torre would have been able to fix what ails the 2008 Yankees whereas Joe Girardi has failed.

These arguments would have more weight if Torre was having more success fixing what ails the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team that is shaping up to have a season of lost opportunities. The Dodgers’ division rivals, the Arizona Diamondbacks, opened the season like they were going to reprise the 1927 Yankees, only with better pitching, going 20-8 on the month. Since then, though, their bats have largely disappeared. Not including Monday’s loss to the Pirates, the D’backs have batted .237 AVG/.319 OBP/.391 SLG since April came to an end, and have a record of 14-22 over that span.

The 1927 Yankees these are not, yet Torre’s Dodgers have been unable to take advantage. They finished April in second place, 5 1/2 games behind Arizona. They remain in second place, 3 1/2 games behind, as they have matched the Diamondbacks’ losing almost game-for-game, going 16-20 since then. Los Angeles, with some notable exceptions, pitched well, but the offense has been stagnant, batting .250/.309/.362.

Some of this has been self-inflicted in a manner consistent with Torre’s entire history, and it makes for a strong contrast with Joe Girardi, who clearly has some idées fixes of his own. The Dodgers have been punished by injuries to players such as Rafael Furcal, the sporadic unavailability of aging players such as Jeff Kent, and Andruw Jones’s expensive face-plant of a season, which has involved a complete inability to hit, an apparent lack of conditioning, and a knee surgery that will keep him out until the All-Star break.

Torre hasn’t been able to do much about these problems because his options are limited; the Dodgers are not deep in prospects, and the only one he has tried, infielder Chin-Lung Hu, has been a major disaster, hitting .159/.224/.206 in more than 100 at bats. When your team trades for former Royals’ Rookie of the Year Angel Berroa because he represents an offensive upgrade on your performance, you can be pretty sure that they’re not going to make a movie about your career.

Other Torre fixes have reeked of old, failed Yankees policies. During spring training, Torre had successfully de-emphasized singles-hitting outfielder Juan Pierre, the incongruous speedster with the bad glove, in favor of Jones, Andre Ethier, and Matt Kemp. Torre had already begun to renege when Jones went down, and, in the spirit of his keeping Chuck Knoblauch in the left field/leadoff spot in 2001 even as that former All-Star ceased entirely to hit, Pierre is now his everyday left fielder and leadoff man. Pierre’s .281/.347/.321 in the leadoff spot isn’t Hu-bad, but it’s not positive either.

In all his years as a manager, Torre hasn’t learned that the batting order is a vehicle for distributing playing time, not for emphasizing speed and power. Batting Pierre leadoff is the same as saying that Pierre deserves more offensive playing time than any other Dodger, and nothing else. Worse, Torre does have an option other than Pierre, the 25-year-old outfielder Delwyn Young, whom Torre has envisioned purely as a pinch hitter. Young has had just four starts this year. Young is not a coming star, but his minor league record suggests a player who might get on base as often as Pierre does but with a great deal more power, perhaps 30 doubles and 15 home runs, where Pierre might have 20 and two. This is actually an urgent matter, as Kemp and Ethier have hit for good averages but little else, and no other players in the lineup have emerged as this year’s run producers.

In short, whatever managerial genius Torre possesses has failed to manifest itself in his approaches to the Dodgers’ problems. Given that most of the Yankees’ problems have not been manager-inflicted, it’s hard to see how he would have been an upgrade on Girardi. Sure, he would have appeared less nervous with his famously avuncular public persona, but that still wouldn’t have repaired the injuries to Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter’s off-year, Robinson Cano’s season-long slump, or the problems in the starting rotation and the bullpen — especially the latter. Torre was helpless to solve the team’s bullpen problems in his last years with the team, handled the relievers as poorly as Girardi does, and clung to Kyle Farnsworth as a pitcher of importance just as much as Girardi does now.

The fact is, a college of coaches featuring Casey Stengel, John McGraw, Billy Martin, and Earl Weaver couldn’t do much to fix the Yankees — or, Willie Randolph-haters, the Mets. These teams each need a savior, but they’re not going to come from the bench.

Mr. Goldman writes the Pinstriped Bible for yesnetwork.com and is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.