I understand he's not a gold glove 2B but even Rizzo had 9 Es at Iowa. Why doesn't he get a chance somewhere on the IF.

His AAA stats this year:
G 56
AB 211
R 28
2B 20
3B 4
HR 2
RNI 28
BB 32
SO 23
BA 322
OBP 407

Any idea why Valbuena is playing and Cardenas is not?

No idea, should be the starting 2nd basemen the last two months of the year. Only conclusion I can think of is to many lefties

I don't understand the lack of interest in Cardenas by the Cubs or this board. I must be missing the link to his not playing.

I was thinking when Vitters isn't playing that Cardenas should be at 3b instead of Niefi Valbuena , but I looked up Cardenas minor league fielding numbers as a 3b , pretty brutal.
I know error totals don't tell the whole picture.
But he's played 101 games at 3b and he has 23 errors

I'm with you. I've seen enough of Nobueno.

Why should he be the 2nd baseman when they have a 2nd baseman who is better than Cardenas and will be on the team next year.

Barney my will a gold glove at 2B. Cardenas has the bad luck of being a middle infielder on a team whose 2 best young players besides Rizzo play 2b and SS.

Understood but with whatg we have for offense at 3B he should get some playing time

It's possible that they will deal Barney this winter and it looks better if he wins a gold glove than if he got benched with two months to go in the season. I suspect that Cardenas will eventually get his chance.

The other issue is that an infield of Vitters/Castro/Cardenas/Rizzo would be pretty ugly defensively.

The Cubs front office has no other plan for him. They just keep him as a backup player. I'd like to see him get more playing time but it's not going to happen.