Only three days after DFAing him, the Dodgers have released Jose Cruz Jr. Can't say I'm too happy about that.
First off, the original decision to DFA him wasn't the best to begin with. You don't dump guys who have .354 on base percentages. That has to help somewhere. Also, though he hasn't shown it this year Cruz, does have the ability to hit home runs. Considering how power starved the Dodgers are this year, having a guy that even has a chance of getting hot and hitting a few dingers is worth keeping around. It bugs me that the Dodgers released the guy that certainly wasn't the 25th worst player on the team.
Compare Cruz to Kenny Lofton: Cruz was hitting .236/.354/.396, Lofton is hitting .299/.347/.385, so Cruz was out OPSing Lofton. Not only that, Cruz can actually catch the ball, a skill that seems to have abandoned Lofton, both anecdotally and statistically, Just watching Lofton, you can see the poor routes he takes to get to fly balls, and his sudden jump to an 89 rate2 confirms the ineptitude that we've seen. The only advantage Lofton has over Cruz is speed, and personally, I'd rather someone catch the ball than steal a base occasionally.
Also on the roster are soft tossing righty Giovanni Carrara, and soft tossing righty Elmer Dessens. Do the Dodgers really need two right handed pitchers who can't be counted on with any sort of lead? Is it so hard to stash Carrara in Vegas? Not to mention I hate the carrying 12 pitchers on the roster. If, like most teams, the backup catcher isn't allowed to play in any circumstance, having only four players on the bench doesn't give the team enough flexibility on the bench night-by-night basis. This leads to running out of player during both night games, or when a guy gets banged up and can't play for a couple games. I don't have any actual backup for this statement; it's just personal preference.
The worst part about this is that Cruz was released after only three days. When someone gets DFAd, the team has ten days to decide what to do with the player, so why not wait until then? Someone's outfielder might go down in the next week, and Jose Cruz is probably a better replacement than whatever AAAA guy they have in their organization. Colletti simply isn't maximizing the resources available to him, for no reason other than laziness. Do I need to say that that's a dumb thing to do?