It only makes sense to bench him (as long as Chipper is still out) if he's hurt. and if he's hurt, why send him to AAA?
and he's not hitting great, but he's still hitting better than Schafer or McLouth. why would you send him down to give them a spot?
but if he's sent down for two weeks, he's a Super Two, on arb in 2016 instead of a FA. and if he's sent down for the rest of the season, he won't even be a Super Two (maybe). but he's too high profile to really earn less from that unless he never lives up to anywhere near last year, in which case why bother manipulating his service time? but then, if you're not going to play him because he's hurt, why not use the opportunity to manipulate his service time.
This sounds like the front office putting out false signals for their trade partners. They really want to hype Schafer, to keep the price down on his trade replacement. This sounds like it goes along with that ("We're so high on Schafer, we're gonna send down Heyward to give him a spot!"). Fredi Gonzolez would have to be Croom-level stupid to believe the things he said about Schafer yesterday, and i'm 50/50 on whether he really is or not.