Very little Lee-way

For weeks, the Twins had been regarded as a front-runner in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes.

On Friday, the front office lost out on the star lefty, who was dealt to the Texas Rangers.

And the players on the Twins roster demonstrated why the here-and-now isn't promising enough to trade away the future.

• Two baserunners were picked off.
• Their best starting pitcher got five outs.
• They failed to get an out on a sac bunt.
• They turned five straight hits into one run.

The Seattle Mariners got a pretty rich package from Texas for Lee. The Rangers have a deep farm system, deeper than the Twins do — they should, given that they've been drafting ahead of the Twins for years — and they have a major league team that is playing well enough to encourage October dreams.

The Twins are playing more like a team that should look to jettison contracts in July, not add them. They have lost something like 4.5 games in the standings to the Tigers this month. This has not been a week or 10 days of a slump, but a solid month-plus of bad baseball. Sloppy baseball.