From what I recall very few teams rely on any 35 year-olds, at least not for position players. DHs, sure, pitcher, more so lately (but those guys are still outliers). I seem to recall an equally popular stat when we had Cutch that he was one of just a very few players getting over 500 PAs in MLB at 34 (and he'd failed to do that at 32 due to injury of course).
It's hard to build a bench these days. If your prospects are ready they should play and if not you keep them in AAA. Pinch-hitting is infrequent. And the Phillies don't have DH starts available either to keep a bat-first bench guy sharper. I'll be surprised if Cave and Pache are actually the bench players by August 1 though. Cave's not good enough and Pache is redundant. But it's unlikely they can upgrade one of those spots now as a pure bench spot who could step in due to injury. If they do upgrade, that player will be at least a half-time starter.
Of course if the premise is that the team is fine running it back history says they've also been fine with two major injuries (Segura and Harper in '22, Hoskins and Harper in '23), in addition to Schwarber being banged up and Marsh spending some time on the IL (which is how Rojas got here). But if Rojas isn't hitting and then you've also got to play Sosa or Cave or Stubbs instead of an injured starter that will be tougher.
