['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

If Heyward continues to open up his front half on inside pitches while maintaining his plate coverage on the outer third, there's no reason to platoon him. His approach against lefties has actually been pretty sound most of the season because lefties struggle to get inside on him.

Personally, I think Grichuk's defense is a little overrated but he's a sound defensive player in CF. He's probably about Jay's equal in terms of range (Jay really does well getting back on balls unless they're straight at him), but obviously has a far stronger arm. Offensively his power just can't be ignored.

There's no question that Jay has no business starting again once Holliday returns. With Wong's ability to handle the leadoff role admirably (and the backup plan of putting Carpenter there), Jay's OBP fit at the top of the order, even if he were still a plus player in that regard, is no longer as important. The book is closed on Grichuk vs. Jay and Grichuk wins in a walk.

I'm still not willing to bury Bourjos, however. Bourjos just brings so much to the team defense as a whole and his speed on the bases makes things happen. We've won 2 games in extras this season on weak choppers that should've been DP balls where he simply forced an error by hauling ass home. Now the counter to that would be that perhaps his erratic bat makes him best suited for situational deployment; pinch running and the like. Personally I don't think he's received enough ABs to give up on him being a neutral offensive weapon if starting.

At this point I'd probably look to get both Bourjos and Grichuk roughly 4 starts/wk with Heyward/Holliday getting 5 each. If you figure on 6 games/wk on average, that gives you 18 starts to rotate among the 4 players, 4, 4, 5, 5, works out perfectly. That would only be about 135 starts on a season for Heyward so I wouldn't go with a strict 5/wk for Heyward - he'd get 6 in a lot of weeks for me. I would think that 145 starts is a good number for him over a full season. Heyward's starts would probably come at Bourjos's expense as I value his D/Speed off the bench quite a bit so he'd be pretty handy even when he's not starting.

It's time to bury Jay, though. He just serves no purpose here.

I agree. I probably wasn't clear w/ my opinion WRT Heyward. I meant spell as in "occasionally replace" and not setting up a clear platoon.