Even with a lot more money to work with, there is no reason for Theo to want to disrupt the position player lineup ...
Russell is not really a baseball issue. It’s something else. Absent that problem, would there be any urgency to change anything up with the infield?...
Russell's .340 slugging, with only a .317 OBP, and a 74 OPS+, was a baseball problem. He was a huge liability offensively.
As a former top prospect, there's lots of ways to be optimistic.
1. It was an anti-career year. He should naturally return nearer to his median (87 OPS+)
2. He's young, and young guys normally improve.
3. He was playing hurt, so he should naturally improve.
4. He was Chili'd, and it seemed counterproductive in his case. With a new coach, he might naturally improve.
5. He was distracted by his abuse. Now that he's getting help, he should naturally be better able to focus on baseball and naturally improve.
So, lots of scenarios in which he is less of a liability on offense, and perhaps might blossom into an average hitter, perhaps even someday into a somewhat good one!
There's a chance it won't get better, or not much.
1. The abuse stuff may remain a distraction.
2. If a guy can't figure things out in four years, maybe he's not going to?
3. After years of failure, confidence can deteriorate?
4. With the Cubs constantly changing coaching input, might his head get too confused with different ideas to ever get simple and instinctive again?
5. Pitchers have a common knowledge on how to beat him now. He hasn't found a workaround; maybe he never will?
6. Sometimes adjustments attempted to provide a workaround for one problem (unsuccessfully thus far) will introduce new vulnerabilities, and just make things worse?
If you put his off-field issues aside, I think there's a really interesting and unpredictable baseball question, where he's going to go as a hitter! I have no idea how that's going to go.