Jon Jay had had 379 AB and 433 PA last year. How do those get picked up? Barring injury, we've got what projects as a strong/deep 12-man roster.
So Maddon will just need to divvy up those extra 433 PA's as best he can among the existing carryover guys.
*Almora + Happ: 323, 413 PA.
*Schwarber + heyward: 486, 481.
*Zobrist: 496.
*La Stella: 151.
Perhaps split up Jay's 433 as follows?:
150 to Almora (323 > 463)
80 to Happ (413 > 493)
50 to Heyward (481 > 531)
50 to Schwarber (486 > 536)
150 to La Stella (151 > 301)
Reduce Zobrist by 50 (496 to 446)
I'm sure Almora and Happ are eager to take more, but they already had a lot. Neither can add a ton. Given how hot-cold Happ can be, and how vulnerable to some kind of stuff, I think it's desirable to be able to not play him all the time when he's in a hole.
*Almora will pick up a bunch, but he can be hot-cold too, and it's unclear whether facing tough righties all the time might not beat him down. I'd like to give him a bunch more, but putting him into **too** many failure-situations is not necessarily doing him or the team a great favor.
Heyward: I hate the idea of giving even more AB's to helpless-hitting, almost-never-a-good-AB Heyward. But may need to bite the bullet and give away even more AB's to him? (If somehow the miraculous happened and he became a decent hitter, that would be so fun...)
Schwarber: I'm much hoping that Schwarber improves a lot, and that we'll be happy to give him more. But as with Almora with RHP, I'm not sure that running Schwarber out there against lefties who are going to eat him alive is doing him any favor. May be kinda optimal to just try to shape him into a good platoon guy rather than forcing him to struggle against LHP?
Zobrist: maybe he'll be healthy and better and take on some extra, or at least carry a comparable load but more productively. But at this age I just figure he's probably in the serous decline phase of his career. I'd rather plan on dropping him one or two hundred PA's rather than gaining more! But Maddon may feel like he's got no choice other than to keep giving him PA's whether he produces or not. But man, if both Heyward and Zobrist are bad, and are still starting most games, the lineup could be less than relentless!
La Stella: I'm imagining La Stella getting a lot more. *IF* Tommy can put up a lot of consistently good AB's, he might end up getting a lot of starts, and could easily pick up an extra 150 PA and get up to 300. Think he'd also kind of replace some of the Jay profile in the lineup; long tough AB's that can give tough AB's even versus good pitchers.
The mis-fit with La Stella is that days you want to sit Schwarber and Heyward versus lefties, La Stella doesn't help you there. Happ is better versus RHP too.
Zo had 397 PA versus RHP last year; so I could imagine Tommy getting 150 of those, if he's hitting and Zobrist isn't? With injury, last year Z was much worse versus LHP than RHP; so if that split continues, transferring his RHP aB's to La Stella does not make perfect sense. But career-wise Zobrist as been better vs LHP. So if Zo could productively keep or increase his AB versus LHP, and Tommy picked up more of Zobrist's AB versus RHP, that might work? (If one or the other was starting, I wonder how they'd fare leading off?)
So, maybe Zobrist and Happ could pick up a lot of the AB versus LHP when Maddon sits Schwarber and/or Heyward? And La Stella/Happ/Zobrist pick up starts against RHP when Maddon sits Almora, and sometimes Baez or Russell. Think it's really important that Zobrist returns to some level of anti-awful versus LHP!
Baez and Russell mostly every-day guys. But both tend to be slumpy, and I can't imagine Baez is going to change his profile much. So may be some matchups and slumps where getting some PA's from TLS/Zo/Happ in place of Baez or Russell might make sense.
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