So elaborating on this a bit, but the Braves had two players play 162 games last year (Swanson & Olsen) and one play 159 (Riley). Harris played pretty much every single day once he was called up and Acuna played most days once his season actually started (he did receive more rest than others which makes sense). Point is their stars started almost every single game if they were healthy.
I’m not convinced that Grifol will go that extreme, but I truly believe he shoots for ~150 starts for our legit stars and the guys where there isn’t some obvious platoon advantage to take advantage of. Guys like Anderson, Robert, Andrus, & Benintendi should be playing pretty much everyday. I get that the former two haven’t been able to stay healthy over the course of a full season as of late, but giving them more than an extra off-day once every two weeks really isn’t going to change things. Unless they are actually hurt, put them on the field.
Moncada, Eloy, & Vaughn fall into the next tier for me because of their history of nagging injuries. To me, I think Grifol shoots for ~140 starts out of them. For Moncada, proactively giving him ~22 off-days against LHP throughout the season makes some sense with a guy like Alberto on the roster. Similar logic applies to Eloy & Vaughn against tough RHP with Sheets on the roster.
That only leaves Colas of the non-catching starters. And with him, it’s really hard to say how they treat him against LHP. My guess is they won’t do a strict platoon in the long-run, but they may slowly introduce him to major league lefties to start the season. Gun to head, I’m guessing he will also get ~22 days off against LHP this year, which would put him around 140 starts if healthy.
As outlined above, this is very different from how Tony managed things. Yes, this hasn’t been the most healthy crew as of late, but Abreu was the only guy who was out there pretty much everyday. I’m super happy this will change significantly under Grifol as not utilizing your best players as much as possible is an incredibly stupid way of managing a team. Put them out there unless their bodies clearly say no, which will obviously quite a bit with this group, but zero reason to baby them.