Free Jason Bartlett

I agree that having Kubel on the roster is a good thing.  That's the only part of your post I agree with, however.

Bartlett has much greater range, it seems to me.  He also has more power, more speed, a stronger arm, and has had something like 150 ABs in the majors so far.  Castro's had over 1000.  So those "career" numbers are a little misleading.  His minor-league numbers, over a number of years, point to a player with significant offensive potential.  And he clearly out-played Castro this spring.  That is, to everyone except Ron Gardenhire.  

Even the boot-licking beat writers for the Strip and Press sound incredulous, to the extent they're allowed.  This was a pretty shocking decision, and one that I find indefensible given this club's needs.  

Castro may have better hands, but he clearly doesn't have the range Bartlett does.  Couple that with Batista's limited range, and you're looking at a gaping hole in the left side of the infield.  

Bartlett shouldn't have to show additional "leadership", either.  As someone else put it, he's got established veterans at second and third in Castillo and Batista.  To me, he would come off as an obnoxious, cocky rookie if he showed any more "leadership".  

Sometimes leaders do so by example, by getting on base and making plays in the field.  They don't always have to do so by being vocal.  That whole argument of the weasel's was just absurd.  

"We're going with a career .230 hitter and sending down a career .233 hitter who's not 100% healthy so Jason Kubel can be on the roster."

No, we're going with Castro so that L-Rod can be on the roster.  Sierra would have been the hitter that pushed Kubel off the roster.  If the Twins kept Bartlett, Castro, Punto, Castillo, and L-Rod all on the roster, that would be 5 guys who are middle infielders, which would be insane.

Maybe Bartlett is a career .233 hitter, but that's in something like 250 ABs.  This isn't like complaining that Cuddyer hasn't had enough chances, Cuddyer's had a lot of at-bats.  Even take Castro for instance, as a 26-year old, Castro hit .195/.245/.255 in 220 ABs.  Then, in the next season where he got more than 1 AB, he hit .241/.283/.366.

Bartlett has a really solid minor league resume, and has given us plenty of reason to believe he will be a much better hitter than Castro this season.  PECOTA has the two hitters forecast as:

Bartlett:  .269/.346/.402
Castro:    .245/.283/.370

Over the course of 450 or so plate appearances, Bartlett's going to be about 20 runs, or 2 wins, better than Castro at the plate.  The last two years in AAA, Bartlett's hit basically .330/.410/.465 in about a full season's worth of at-bats.

At some point, you see enough of a guy in the major leagues where his major league numbers mean more than his minor league numbers, but Bartlett has yet to reach that point.  Not to mention, a lot of his numbers from last year were collected in the #2 spot in the lineup, where Bartlett had no business being, but it was Gardy insisted on putting him, because he has a fixation on hitting a middle infielder second in the lineup.  Put Bartlett in the #9 spot, and there won't be the pressure on him, plus add the fact that he has some more experience now and should be more comfortable, and there's every reason to believe that Bartlett will improve (including his tremendous spring.)

From watching Bartlett, I also think that you're overestimating his defensive shortcomings.  Besides the fact that while Castro has good hands and an accurate arm, his range is far from spectacular.

It just seems as though this team is built too much to an extreme of run prevention over everything else.  At some point, it pays to be a more balanced team and give up a little bit in the field in order to score some more runs.

Plus, you can come up with a pretty reasonable compromise by starting out by planning on getting Bartlett 3 plate appearances per game, unless that third plate appearance is in a really high leverage situation against a RHP, in which case you might go for a lefty pinch-hitter.  Then, you get Castro his 2-3 innings of fielding.

Basically, some combination of Bartlett/Castro ought to be better for this team than some combination of Castro/Punto.

...where Castillo has made a few comments, looks, about several plays Bartlett made.  Gardy didn't play Bartlett much with Castillo throughout spring training which was an early indication of what was happening.  I wonder if Castillo said something to or about Bartlett's play that caused Gardy to cut Bartlett?

Range is difficult to quantify.  Watch the two of them play.  See how far Castro can go to get the ball, and see how far Bartlett can go to get the ball.  Judging them by their numbers in the 60-odd games they played last year is a fool's errand.  You need more data than that to draw any kind of meaningful conclusion from fielding statistics.

...almost all of those stats loved Castro, too, and gave Punto decent marks, even though I feel Punto is a below average defensive shortstop.

For instance, using Clay Davenport's FRAA system, Bartlett was indeed about 19% more valuable than an average SS (which is what the 119 Rate tells you.)  However, using that same system, Castro was 24% more valuable than an average SS last year.  Pinto's PMR favored Bartlett, but still had Castro as well above average.

Looking at the numbers, I think there was something wacky going on with balls hit to the Twins' infielders last season.  But, looking at all of the available info, it doesn't seem like there's a huge difference between Castro's fielding and Bartlett's fielding to me, except that one is more steady and the other is a bit flashier.  As far as either being well above average, though, I'm not really convinced.

...but the stats are affected by bias, too.  It's just that the stats are biased in a more subtle and hard to understand way.  Take Zone Rating, for instance, which is a fairly advanced stat, though not really the best one.  It attempts to judge how many balls a fielder fields that go into his defensive zone.  But how do you define a fielder's defensive zone?  That's a rather subjective measure, especially since there are certainly plays (mostly pop-ups) where more than one fielder could make the play.  So even though Zone Rating makes it seem like there's no bias, there's a hidden bias in there.

The best way to judge defense right now is to combine the stats with observation.  (Actually, that's the best way to judge anything in baseball, but offensive stats are more accurate than defensive ones at the moment.)

It's just really hard to divvy up, using stats, what part of run prevention falls under the pitching column and what part of run prevention falls under the fielding column, so we have to rely on observations maybe more than we would like to.

It's tough to measure exactly how good each fielder is, but it's not as hard to tell what the range is in the value of fielding.  Premium defenders can be worth 20-30 runs over average, and terrible defenders can cost 20-30 runs over average, especially at the up-the-middle positions.  Those are the extreme ranges of the spectrum, but if Castro really was a solid defender, something like 10 runs above average, and Bartlett was a poor defender, worth 10 runs below average, then the difference could about to about 20 runs over the course of the season, which is probably about the difference between their hitting.

So I think it's an unfair characterization to say that Bartlett's bat is so much better that there's no way for Castro's defense to overcome it no matter how good he is.

...goes back awhile.  I even remember at the time Bartlett decided to not play winter ball, Gardy expressed his displeasure publicly.  I also remember being worried about how it might affect JB's chances of making the team.