The Dodgers made a few minor-league moves this week, and the two most significant ones involved the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes.

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Tony Delmonico, 2008 sixth-round pick, was released. The 25-year-old was hitting just .188 with the Quakes in 21 games.

He was drafted out of Florida State, converted to catcher, and had a great debut season in the Pioneer League: .340/.443/.716. The catching experiment didn’t work, despite a decent caught stealing percentage for a guy who never caught before (28 percent). However, 33 passed balls in 102 games is where the experiment ended.

Delmonico is a former favorite of mine, as I ranked him as high as No. 11 in my prospect rankings just three years ago. Last year he was No. 30 and this year was No. 46.

He has good on-base skills, as his .394 career on-base percentage reveals, but Delmonico played against inferior competition for most of his Dodgers career and has not fared well in the last couple of seasons.

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Jonathan Garcia, last year’s April monster with Great Lakes, now finds himself on the Ogden Raptors roster. There’s no word on whether he’s injured or not, but his performance with Rancho was definitely sub-par.

In 15 games, Garcia posted a .228/.250/.263 line with 22 strikeouts in 57 at-bats, and that simply isn’t going to get it done for the 20-year-old. After hitting 19 home runs in the Midwest League as a 19-year-old last season, he had just two extra-base hits for the Quakes (two doubles).

When I saw him in person a a couple weeks ago, he actually had a good first two at-bats, singling both times. However, he struck out in his next two appearances and looked bad doing so. He swung at pitches that were literally eye-level, which speaks to his problem area.

Presumably, he went down to Ogden because the roster of Great Lakes is jam-packed. However, Ogden’s season doesn’t start until June 18th (two weeks after the draft), so maybe the Dodgers are just giving Garcia a little time off. Like I said, no word on whether he’s injured.

Fortunately for Garcia, he’s still young. His boom or bust potential is possibly the highest of any Dodgers position player, and he could use some seasoning at the lower levels to get his confidence back. Garcia just needs to get back to doing what was working for him, because for a smaller guy (5’11, 175 pounds) he has some great power potential. Hopefully a stint with the Raptors will get him back on track.

Given the dearth of position player talent in the Dodgers system, they badly needed him to progress, but all he’s done is regress so far in 2012.

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Jarrad Page, the former football player, began his season with the Quakes, but he also finds himself on the Raptors roster after going 1-for-10 with a walk and three strikeouts.

Brian Cavazos-Galvez, the subject of a previous post, was demoted from Chattanooga to Rancho in hopes of boosting the team’s offense (even though he couldn’t cut it this time ’round with the Lookouts).

Joc Pederson also made his return (injury) to Rancho on Wednesday night, going 1-for-5 with two strikeouts.

NFL veteran Jarrad Page, who showed up to the Los Angeles Dodgers open tryout, was signed to a minor league contract by the team over the weekend.

Page, 27, played football and baseball at UCLA. He pursued an NFL career and played for the Kansas City Chiefs from 2006-09, for the New England Patriots in 2010 and for the Philadelphia Eagles and Minnesota Vikings last season. He was not expected to be retained by the Vikings.

Page, an outfielder, attended the Dodgers’ open tryout on March 1.

He played baseball at UCLA in 2004-05. In 2005, he hit .149 with one home run and 48 strikeouts in 101 at-bats.

Obviously he’s an outstanding athlete, but the concern of everybody has to be whether or not he can hit.

I’d love to see him make it, but it’s admittedly a long shot.

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In injury news, Andre Ethier and Justin Sellers appear to be alright.

Outfielder Andre Ethier and infielder Justin Sellers resumed workouts on Sunday, an indication that their Saturday ailments were relatively minor.

Honestly, Sellers’ situation wasn’t as important because he’s a utility guy, but if Ethier’s injury became a lingering issue, it would cripple the offense. Hopefully this really is the end of it.

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Trayvon Robinson was not so happy about being traded by the Dodgers.

Trayvon Robinson was riding the team bus in New Orleans last July when his cellphone rang. The caller was DeJon Watson, the Dodgers’ assistant general manager.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Watson said. “You’ve been traded to the Boston Red Sox.”

“What’s the good news?” Robinson replied.

Still, the initial news of the trade “really hurt me,” he said. The Crenshaw High alum was hitting .293 with 26 home runs for the Dodgers’ triple-A team, one step from taking the field for his hometown team.

“Everything they told me to do, I did it,” he said. “I didn’t disrespect the uniform.

“I always tried to wear the Dodger jersey the way Jackie Robinson did, with a lot of pride and courage.”

Understandable. I think most of us were wondering what the hell the Dodgers were doing.

In any case, hopefully Trayvon channels his anger into a productive career.

Dee Gordon is straddling the line between confidence and arrogance, which is fine, but that’s not the part about this article that concerns me.

“I don’t care what they say,” Gordon said.

They say he’s impatient at the plate, that he needs to walk more, work counts deeper. He believes he knows better.

“Would you mess around with me and walk me? No, the pitchers come right at me, they aren’t hitting corners,” said Gordon. “They feel they can knock the bat out of my hands. In reality, I can hit. So it helps me to be ready to swing and not look for a walk. I could always hit the ball. I’m fine with walking, but it’s called hitting, not walking.”

Oh joy.

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Dodgers hope to sign one or two players that showed up at the open tryout, including Doug Davis.

The 36-year-old Davis, a left-hander who strung together four consecutive seasons of double-digit wins from 2004-07, went 1-7 with a 6.50 ERA last year for the Cubs. He has four seasons with at least 200 innings pitched, but his career hasn’t been the same since he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2008 and underwent surgery.

Another athlete trying out was Minnesota Vikings defensive back Jarrad Page, which came as a shock to the Vikings. Page played college baseball at UCLA and was drafted three times by MLB teams as a center fielder without ever signing.

Jarrad Page is an interesting case, as he used to be a starter in the NFL for about three years, but seems to be getting less playing time recently. 27 is old for a prospect, but this is a different case.

Unfortunately, he didn’t even hit in college, but he was drafted three times, so the athleticism must have been appealing.

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Ken Gurnick of MLB.com reports that Aaron Harang‘s foot is an issue this year, but not the same part as last year.

Dodgers starter Aaron Harang was able to throw live batting practice Wednesday despite irritation to his right foot caused by new orthotics.

The Dodgers had some degree of concern, because Harang missed a month last year with the Padres due to a stress reaction to the same foot caused by pitching on a mound with a deep hole dug into it by the opposing pitcher. His current discomfort is with a different part of the foot than last year.

Harang said he was tentative warming up, but he could tell that the pitching motion didn’t cause discomfort.

For whatever reason, it’s not a big deal when Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw have dings and dents in Spring Training, but whenever these veterans have issues, I cringe.