This is a good day. The Dodgers just got better by invoking the hoary “addition by subtraction” principle …

By releasing Andruw Jones.

Who is only … the biggest bust in Dodgers history. And this is a club, remember, that has made some whopper mistakes.

Darren Dreifort and that monster ($54 million, was it?) contract comes to mind. Kevin Brown and the $105 million deal. The Pedro Martinez-for-Delino DeShields trade.

But Andruw? The Mother of All Boners.

Here is the news story. From espn.com.

Whether or not the Dodgers sign Manny Ramirez, Andruw Jones had to be gone. Fans had given up on him, the club had given up on him and he had decided he would never succeed in Los Angeles. He had quit on the franchise.

What can you do with a guy like that? Just write off the $36.2 million you committed to a tubby, washed up outfielder and promote someone from Triple-A, because there have to be at least a dozen guys in the organization who could do better than a .158 batting average with three home runs and 14 RBI in 75 games. There are pitchers who could better those numbers. C.C. Sabathia,  to name one.

So, what do we take from this?

First, this is Ned’s Biggest Folly. Ned being Ned Colletti, former sports writer who covered hockey and now the Dodgers general manager, who rolled the dice on a guy who had just turned in the worst season of his career, in 2007, when he plummeted to a .222 batting average and 26 homers. Tellingly,  the Atlanta Braves, his only team till then, made no real attempt to sign a guy who was, in theory, 30 years old and just entering his prime.

What the Dodgers got was a guy who showed up fat and out of shape at spring training, got some ouchies,  then some more serious ouchies. But he didn’t hit before, during or after those injuries. He was useless, pathetic, really, from the first day till the last.

He was one of those guys, more common in football and basketball than baseball (say hello, LaDainian Tomlinson), who just get up one morning and … it’s gone. The talent they banked on, vanished. They are even more surprised than we are.

Andruw Jones had as many horrific at-bats, just I-have-no-idea-and-no-chance at-bats, as any Dodgers regular I can remember. And I’ve been watching the team for 45 years. It was impossible to look at the flailing fatty and imagine he once had been a real player and a scary hitter. It was not possible. That’s how far and how fast he fell.

There are rumors out there that he is playing winter ball — and still looks horrible.

Eventually, we may find out that he is significantly older than he says he is, which certainly would not be a first for a player from the Caribbean. We might even find out he has some fairly serious physical condition.  We may come to pity him, someday, for that.

For now, he had to be gone. He and the Dodgers … just too many ugly things had happened. Not ugly in a personal way, but a performance way. He was just a horrible baseball player, and a guy who almost by himself kept the Dodgers out of the 2008 playoffs by dragging down the team for almost two months. A guy with no power who never got on base lodged in the 4-5-6 batting slots for six weeks?

I can’t say I wish him luck, as Ned does. The only thing more annoying that his historically wretched 2008 Dodgers season would be for him to sign for the minimum with the Braves, live off the rest of that $36.2 million the Dodgers will pay him over the next six years … and go back to being a 30-and-100 guy. That would tick me off because it would indicate he held something back, when he was in L.A.

As he disappears out of the Dodgers clubhouse, here is one thing to consider. And I may gave done this arithmetic before. If we figure 1 million fans buy those 3.8 million Dodgers tickets in a year, each of us paid $36.20 (one way or another, in ticket hikes or parking or concessions) for Ned Colletti’s mind-boggling Andruw Blunder.

It would be nice if the GM were a little more careful with our money. Like, he may as well take on a career as a hedge-fund manager if he’s going to go around writing off $36.2 million.

But, in the end, it was the right thing.

Andruw Jones: Thank God and the waiver wire you’re gone.