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.
You realize that people transition to 1b as they get older. Were people up in arms when Yaz was moved to 1b? 1b is the dumping ground for older players. Napoli moved to 1b this year and was fantastic. Why wouldn't Beltran be as good? He's much more athletic than Napoli.
Edit: see SK's post above.