Ricky Ledee was placed on waivers last night and swiftly picked up by the Mets, presumably because he's not useless. I assume this is to open up a roster spot for Nomar.
There's nothing inherently wrong with losing Ricky Ledee. Guys who can provide a decent left handed bat off the bench are pretty plentiful, and Ledee's injury history kept him from being much more than that. Still, the man was still good at what he did, you could count on him to provide a .750ish OPS over 200 at bats. Sure, he was at .669 this year, but this was in a remarkably small sample size. Eight at bats earlier, Ledee was OPSing .780, so you can't really make any judgements about his ability from this years stats. Still, guys who can't start or play the field are pretty expendable.
I start to have problems with this move when you combine this with releasing Jose Cruz. The Dodgers have now dumped two semi-useful reserve outfielders for nothing, leaving Dodgers with only four outfielders. I could understand keeping Ledee over Cruz because Ledee could hit left handed, but if you were going to get rid of Ledee anyway, why not keep Cruz around? I'm pretty confident he's a better outfielder than Ramon Martinez, James Loney, or Julio Lugo. He might not be, but I wouldn't know, since those guys have played a combined eight games in the outfield in the majors.
It seems to me that when you add a utility guy, you should subtract a utility guy, namely Ramon Martinez. Martinez is rapidly regressing to the mean, dropping from a .902 OPS on June 2nd, to a close to career level .725 today. The guy still has some value, the Phillies got him in the Placido Polanco deal last year, and some team like the Cubs might want him for some God forsaken reason. Also, Jason Repko isn't getting much use, he's only had 20 at bats since coming off the DL. Why not just send him back to the minors?
So, yet another player who's not worthless gets thrown away by the Dodgers for nothing. Between this and the usual "buy high, sell low" mentality, I really hope none of the prospects suffer any serious injuries in the near future.