Will a cooler head prevail?

The new manager is looking and sounding calm, but his words are revealing something else.

Joe Torre admits he didn’t spend as much time with the nucleus of his club as he would’ve liked, that he’s relying on the eyes and ears of his coaches more than usual to make decisions. He has no clue when his wounded players will return or how much of a problem their bodies will give them over the next six or seven months.

And though Torre’s face is on billboards around Los Angeles and owner Frank McCourt has trumpeted his signing as the start of a new era in the franchise’s history, the man himself has repeatedly said he didn’t do much differently compiling a losing record with the Atlanta Braves than he did managing the New York Yankees to four World Series titles.

With the Dodgers opening the season against the San Francisco Giants on Monday on the 50th anniversary of their move west from Brooklyn, Torre seems to have far more questions than answers. Even for a 67-year-old manager who frequently talks about the unpredictability in baseball, this level of unpredictability is unusual.

When asked two days ago how his team was shaping up, Torre raised his eyebrows and said, “I’ve never been this close to the end [of spring training] and not knowing the makeup of the club.”

Nor has he ever traveled so much in a single spring.

Torre left camp in Florida with a split squad for the first major league games in China, two exhibition contests against the San Diego Padres in Beijing two weeks ago. He reunited with the part of the team that stayed behind in Florida -- and had most of his projected starters -- a week later in Arizona.

After a 2-2 tie against the Angels in an exhibition game in Anaheim on Thursday night, General Manager Ned Colletti drew laughs in Torre’s office by cracking jokes about the history made by the Dodgers.

“We tied in China, California, Arizona and Florida,” Colletti said. “Nobody’s ever done that before. Nobody.”

Said Torre: “I knew I wanted to make my mark here.”

But on a more serious note, the travel cost Torre a week with Blake DeWitt, a 22-year-old prospect who probably will start the season at third base because of injuries to Nomar Garciaparra, Andy LaRoche and Tony Abreu.

How much time Garciaparra will miss because of a microfracture in his wrist is unknown. LaRoche will be out until at least May and Abreu is expected to be sidelined for two to three weeks.

Second baseman Jeff Kent has battled a strained hamstring over the last month.

The health of Garciaparra, Kent and closer Takashi Saito (calf) are of particular concern because of their ages -- 34, 40 and 38 -- and their recent histories.

“You have to expect anything to happen at any time,” Colletti said.

Especially after last season, when the deteriorating health of the pitching staff caused the team to tumble to a fourth-place finish.

Torre has maintained the team’s fortunes will largely be decided by the pitching and, so far, that area has remained relatively unaffected by injuries. The exceptions are former All-Star Jason Schmidt and reliever Yhency Brazoban, who are recovering from shoulder surgeries. Schmidt will be shelved until at least late May and Brazoban was sent to double A to rebuild shoulder strength.

But the Dodgers might’ve come out of the spring with a deeper rotation than expected, as the two injury-plagued pitchers competing with Schmidt for the fifth spot, Esteban Loaiza and Chan Ho Park, had solid exhibition seasons. Park, who went into camp on a minor league deal, pitched well enough to force his way into the bullpen as a long reliever.

The Dodgers look solid in the first four rotation spots. Opening-day starter Brad Penny was 16-4 last season with a 3.03 earned-run average despite battling abdominal problems over the final month and a half. Derek Lowe is a consistent innings-eater, and though 23-year-old Chad Billingsley had a rough spring, management is expecting that time on the mound will allow him to correct his mechanical flaws.

No. 4 starter Hiroki Kuroda, who left Japan to sign a three-year, $35.3-million contract with the Dodgers, appeared to get a better feel for the wider American strike zone as the spring progressed.

Though Saito began the weekend having pitched only five innings this spring because of a strained calf, Torre said he wasn’t far behind the other pitchers. Saito saved 39 games last season and posted a 1.40 ERA. Setting him up will be hard-throwing Jonathan Broxton, who struck out 10.87 batters per nine innings.

But, Torre said, “We still need that bridge in the middle . . . especially early in the season when we might not get length out of the starters. We still need to get that sixth and seventh inning solved. You get a chance to lose more leads during those innings.”

On the offensive side, Colletti is hoping a healthy Rafael Furcal and the power of newly signed Andruw Jones could rejuvenate a lineup that was 21st in the majors in runs. Furcal was hobbled by a sprained ankle last season and Jones, in a down year with the Atlanta Braves, hit more home runs (26) than any Dodger. Colletti’s expectation is that the Dodgers’ core of young players, including catcher Russell Martin, first baseman James Loney and right fielder Matt Kemp, will continue to develop and hit 20 or more home runs each.

For what it’s worth, the Dodgers led the National League this spring with 33 home runs entering the weekend. Six of them were hit by another up-and-comer, Andre Ethier, creating what Torre called his most difficult decision -- whom to start in left field between the 25-year-old Ethier and the far more experienced Juan Pierre, who is in the second year of a five-year, $44-million contract.

Torre conceded that his decision would hurt someone’s feelings, but said he could live with that. He said he also wasn’t particularly concerned with how well his players got along when he was asked about the generational divide in the clubhouse last season.

“I’m not a believer that chemistry builds winning,” he said. “I believe winning builds chemistry.”

His players, however, sense that Torre’s calm demeanor has positively affected the clubhouse atmosphere.

“That even keel might carry over to the ballclub, where we can’t get too high or we can’t get too low either,” Pierre said. “He’s one of the more laid-back managers I’ve had.”

That being said, the players say they aren’t counting on Torre to be the cure-all that helps them win a playoff series for the first time in 20 years.

“This is my seventh manager in nine seasons,” Penny said. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, Joe’s going to come in and change everything.’ But the players have to step up and do our jobs. Was it [former manager Grady Little’s] fault we lost last year? Absolutely not. It’s our fault. We weren’t good enough.”

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dylan.hernandez@latimes.com