RE: mercenary
Sports writers alude to players being soldiers all the time. Writers tend to be lazy shits. It's a horrible analogy. Playing a game != going to war.
I take the position that our once great president Clinton had: every guy deserves a blow every once in a while. Therefore, having a platoon at 1b isn't the end of the world.
In 6 of those seasons, Yaz played less than 25 games at 1b.
At 3b, he played 3 games one year and 30 5 years later. For someone who played over 3,000 games, calling that "a little time at 3b" is exaggerating it.