I admit to not having seen the guy play, so I'm not picking an arguement here, but the fact is that Mientkiewicz did not get to many balls - for whatever reason. He had only 69 assists all year. Unfortunately, the stats don't differentiate the put-outs -- he may have made of bunch of diving grabs of line-drives, but they look just the same in the stats as a flip from the pitcher.

He had only .517 assists or errors per nine innings. Compare that to .795 for Helton, .658 for Giambi (who nobody calls a great fielder) and .683 for all other Twins 1Bs (in only 171 innings). In 10 full games, Giambi gets to 6 or 7 ground balls; Helton gets to 8; Mientkiewicz only to 5. I expect that these are the kind of stats that go into Purebaseball.