Someone just threw Andruw Jones a life line.

An injury.

The Dodgers’ mega-bust center fielder, arguably the worst free-agent position-player signing in baseball history, apparently has torn cartilage in his right knee.

“Gutty ‘Druw” said he will wait until Friday to see if the knee comes around. If it doesn’t he may go in for surgery and be out “four to five weeks” which I can see him blowing up to four or five months. Anything to get out of this meltdown of a season.

To refresh your memory, Jones has been awful. Not just bad. Terrible. Horrendous. The running sore of the Dodgers’ offense.

In 132 at-bats spread over 42 games, he is hitting .167 with two homers, seven RBI and an on-base percentage of .275. He has struck out 44 times, once in every three at-bats, that is.

Now comes An Excuse.

Hey, I was hurt. That wasn’t the real me. (Though we don’t know how he explains away the .222 batting average from 2007. But we digress.)

Anyway, the man is injured. He is going to have to sit. And I’m going to take an informed and cynical guess here and say he doesn’t play again for the Dodgers before August.

This works out well for everyone. Or better than seeing him carry around that maddening smirk as he posts another 0-for-4. It isn’t quite as embarrassing for the Dodgers and general manager Ned Colletti if Andruw is off somewhere “rehabilitating.” (And you thought he was fat now? Wait till he sits a month or four.)

Better for Andruw to be an out-of-sight waste of $36.5 million. Running him out there to do nothing … well, that just makes fans turn toward the press box and see if they can see Colletti so they can glare at him.

Oh, and did you see the weird part of that story? The part about Jones having a “golf ball-sized wart” on the back of his knee?

What is up with that? Shouldn’t anyone with access to a doctor have that thing removed? Have you even heard of a wart the size of a golf ball? Yikes.

Anyway, Jones and the Dodgers finally catch a break. An injury. Now he can go hide, the Dodgers can play Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and (gulp) Juan Pierre in the outfield every day and avoid the farce of trying to get Jones into the lineup when he so richly (emphasis on RICHLY) deserves to sit.