If they benched every player on the 2019 offense who was under average (per OPS+), here are the players who would have sat (50 PA’s minimum):
Fowler 98
DeJong 97
Martinez 97
Carpenter 91
O’Neill 88
Molina 85
Wieters 80
Bader 78
Knizner 75
Munoz 71
Gyorko 52
That would have left just four above-average guys to play eight positions, and one of them, Ozuna, is now gone. So yeah, single out the top guy on the below-average list and ignore the 10 others who were even worse. Gee, I wonder why?
The data is about as real as one can get. Much more so than goofy speculation that a player has playing time assurances in his contract, which by the way, is against the rules. But rant on…as if every poster here doesn’t already know that you dislike Molina and Fowler…