Hays, Mateo, Urias, and Kemp
First - your point that every win matters. It honestly doesn’t. It’s not 1965 when you had to win the pennant outright. The WC has expanded so much it’s diluted the regular season. If they were 3-5? Fine.
Holliday will be up shortly. They wanted to get him a couple more AB’s vs lefties. They don’t like having to send high profile guys down if there’s a chance the scuffle.
Westberg starting regularly at 3B now. You can see the wheels in motion - and they probably want him to debut at home (although Gunnar didn’t).
Kemp will be gone and Urias will be moved to the Kemp role. They want guys like Mayo to play every day. And he’s not a utility guy anyway.
Mateo has a role because he can get you a stolen base when necessary. To - ya know - get wins. People can argue the value of that, but Elias likes it.
So that means you’d have to be prepared to lose Hays for good with probably not a ton of return. Cutting ties with Hayes at the point in the season is probably a bit risky. Stowers, Kjerstad coming up and performing isn’t a certainty. Remember Cowser scuffled. Stowers has scuffled. Elias is rolling the dice that some sort of injury will happen because it always does and that will unlock the jam.