Is it worth it to have Kubel in the tield?

We talked about whether or not it was a valid concern that the Twins defense was missing a lot more balls in the outfield. I thought I would dig a little deeper and see if the team is improved by the replacement of Carlos Gomez with Jim Thome.
On the surface, this is an obvious “yes”. But of course, we aren’t replacing the bat of Gomez with the bat of Thome, we are replacing the glove of Gomez with the glove of Kubel as well. This is an overly simplistic take on the situation, of course, but it’s a look worth taking.
Kubel’s fielding this year has been very poor by almost every metric. His fielding percentage is high, of course, because of the balls he gets to, he usually catches. Of course, he doesn’t get to all that many balls. His fielding percentage is the lowest among outfielders, and his WAR (wins above replacement) based solely on fielding is -.8. His bat is actually not doing a whole lot this year, and is providing only a .7 WAR this year, but we aren’t looking at that. For comparison purposes, Gomez’s fielding WAR was .9, so the change in fielding WAR is -1.7. Not so great (and that’s comparing Gomez to Kubel… the comparison to Delmon Young is even more staggering, – 2.8)
Thome, who is evaluated exclusively on his bat, is providing a WAR of 2.4. It’s his best season since 2007, which is why he is in the lineup every day. If this tells you how much more valuable a bat is than a glove, Carlos Gomez’ outstanding glove gave him the same WAR as his forgettable bat: .9. The change, then, from having Thome instead of Gomez is +1.5. Again, we aren’t taking into account Delmon Young’s addition to the every day lineup
Certainly, there are flaws in the logic and my methodology… I’m doing this after 1100pm on a Tuesday night, after all. For example, a truer reflection of the outfield defense would explore Gomez vs Span in center and Kubel vs Span as a corner outfielder. Also, my understanding of the statistics used isn’t as good as it should be, but the simplified conclusion I have made here is this: A straight replacement of Gomez with Thome, moving Kubel from DH to the field is a slight downgrade in the quality of the team. Thank goodness for Delmon Young’s bat and JJ Hardy’s glove.