Bleacher Bums Forum

I agree, unless they are platooned, which seems highly unlikely.

I wonder.  He talked about the difficulty of finding a CF, and suggested other workarounds as opposed to just finding an every-day CF. 

CF:  "have in house options but...."  "prototypical"  "not a position with great surplus"  "have to be realistic"  "maybe platoon, or complement with a more attainable player from outside the organization". 

In that context, I wonder if a "more attainable" "complementary" players might be the workaround.

I don't necessarily think Castellanos would necessarily be prohibitively redundant.  1.  Guys get injured or need some rest.  2.  Schwarber-Heyward-Castellanos isn't a great defensive outfield, but it might be a very good offensive OF.  3.  "More attainable" "Complementary" guy could pick a bunch of starts (depending on if he's any good); Heyward's bat could take some rest; Schwarber has plenty of lefties that he doesn't match up well; guys get hurt, etc.. 

If you added a "more attainable" "complementary" RH guy who picked up 50-100 starts, I'd consider that as an interesting workaround.  Typically ~45 starts are LHP.  So if for those starts you rested either Heyward or Schwarber, that seems perfectly reasonable to me.  Maybe Heyward would play 50 starts in center, maybe 100.  But there wouldn't be a shortage of starts for either of them, or Castellanos....  as long as you're willing to play Schwarber-Heyward-Castellanos together for 50-100 starts. 

He talked up Schwarber, "breakthrough season", etc.; maybe that's pure trade salesmanship, maybe he's sincere. 

Also with Castellanos, "we'd love to have him back" but he knows that "it's not as simple as that".  Maybe it's "not as simple" because it's all about the money.  Or maybe it's "not as simple" because they'd need to find a worthwhile deal for either Schwarber or Heyward to make it work, beats me.  Or maybe it's "not as simple" because Cast and Schwarber are just too similiar as bad-fielding outfielders. 

But he also a couple of times referred to "parts of the strike zone we're otherwise vulnerable too", "harder to game-plan for", and "team that can be game-planned-for", and that Castellanos is NOT vulnerable to those same part of the strike zone. So if he's trying to improve contact and not be so "game-plan" vulnerable to anybody who can work the upper half, Castellanos still seems to be a good fit lineup-wise. 

Obviously the "game plan" is the upper half.  Bryant, Schwarber, Baez, Happ, Bote, none of those launch-angle guys thrive up there.  Not sure with Willson.  Almora was supposed to do well there, but not this year.