Why not have both out there. I mean, if they decide to trade Schwarber in the off-season, you could have a platoon of Jay/Almora in CF and Happ in LF.
Given the year Jay had I imagine someone offers him a shot at starting rather than what he's doing now. I would imagine he can get some where between $12-15 mil which is significantly more than the cubs are paying him at $8 mil. I mean look people need to realize they aren't dealing Schwarber. Whether or not you agree with their assessment, he's a potential 40 HR guy who has top notch intangibles that they love. And the fact of the matter is his numbers are drastically skewed by a horrible April/May. He hit .244/.336/.557 from june onward. What killed his numbers this year is he had 206 PAs in April/May where he hit .165/.286/.341. That's a tough hole to dig out of. He probably shouldn't have been batting lead off and I imagine the cubs probably bought too big into his WS performance when the smarter thing would have been to expect him to start slow after missing so much time in 2016.
Overall, he had a 128 wRC+ from June onward which if he'd done it over the full season would put him tied for 33rd with Buster Posey and Khris Davis. No team in their right mind is going to give up on that kind of bat because they don't make many of them and frankly it's reasonable to assume there's more in him than that. Clearly he has flaws to work on but if he's this in a flawed state what is he when he works those out?
People seem to want a boilerplate line up that never changes but that's just not who maddon is. He's a guy who plays platoon splits heavy and who doesn't want to burn his guys out using them every day early in the season. So quite frankly, I think Heyward, Bryant, Rizzo and maybe Russell are the only guys who will start 140+ games. The rest I think they plan to rotate around and play the best matchups. Baez and Almora have large platoon splits. They kill LHP but are noticeably worse vs RHP. Schwarber and Zobrist are kind of the reverse. And Happ is so flexible you can move him around wherever you need to plug gaps in the line up. Don't want to start Almora vs a tough RHP? Play Happ in CF, Schwarber in LF and Zobrist/Baez at 2B. Don't want to expose Schwarber vs a tough LHP? Play Almora CF, Happ LF, and Baez at 2B. Need to give Bryant a day off? Move Baez to 3B, Happ to 2B. Need to give Heyward a day off? Move Zobrist to RF and Happ to one of the other 3 positions.
Having all those guys isn't a burden. It's a positive because Zobrist is arguably the worst of the bunch and he's still pretty starter caliber albeit not what he used to be. That's why I assume any other OF they get is going to be a guy who really is only a defensive replacement plus maybe a pinch runner type. That is to say someone you don't care about giving a ton of PAs to. With the guys they have now you basically have 3 rosters spots to play with assuming joe goes for an 8 man pen and one of those 3 is the back up catcher. One probably needs to be a guy who can cover all 3 OF spots. And the other is probably an infielder or a 3rd catcher if they decide to go that route(presumably La Stella).
And to be blunt, unless you're getting say Archer, trading Schwarber doesn't make any sense because the bat he gives you for the price you are paying is just ridiculous value. Despite his struggles, he was still worth 1.5 fWAR. On the open market you're paying $10-12 mil for a player like that. He made around $500k. Even if you think he's an imperfect fit, the difference in money is fairly drastic. The difference between him and what Jay will get is probably the difference between a legitimate #3 pitcher and a Brett Anderson type. I'd rather spend the money on pitching and hope he fixes some of his flaws.