Degrees of embarrassment

Losing is bad.  Losing six straight is worse. Maybe losing 15-0 is worse yet.

This play was the difference between
trailing by 10 runs and trailing by nine. 

It's impossible to lose 15-0 and yield 25 hits and look good. The Twins on Monday night didn't look professional. Or even attentive.

It was back to the days of April and May, when ground balls rolled through the infield, the baserunners were prone to blunders and more rundowns were botched than productive.

Getting thrown out at home when down 10-0? What's the point, Alexi Casilla?

Then there was the first-inning rundown that took forever. The infielders were so wary of getting close to Matt Kemp that I figured he had some communicable disease. The rundown problem had disappeared during the hot streak — remember when the Twins won 15 of 17? — but it sure looked bad again Monday.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka was charged with one error. He was, for a while, charged with a second, but the ruling was changed after the game. Having watched the replay, I don't really understand changing the ruling. Yes, the ball was hit hard, but (a) he didn't field it cleanly and (b) made a bad throw.

Whether it's a hit or an error, that play underscores the issue for a shortstop with a less than optimal arm. Shortstops have the infield's longest throws, so there is a premium on fielding the ball cleanly. When Nishioka played that hard hop off his chest, he had little chance of getting the out because his arm isn't good enough to make up the difference.

Tuesday is another day. May the home team not fleece the paying customers again.

Problem spot: Rundowns after pickoffs

Finally, Alexi Casilla makes the tag.

It didn't cost them Wednesday's game — it didn't even cost an out, much less a run.

But the Twins infield still managed to embarrass itself trying to get a runner out after picking him off first base.

File this under "doing the little things wrong — repeatedly."

Wednesday's play came in the ninth inning, when Dusty Hughes picked off Franklin Gutierrez. The play was scored 1-3-4-3-6-4. That's at least two throws too many for that play, and it represented at least the fourth time the Twins have had difficulty executing a rundown between first and second base. At least this time they got the runner out.

I saw a similar screwed-up rundown during my spring training sojourn.  That one featured a collection of minor leaguers until Matt Tolbert got the ball and ran down the runner himself. I figured than that the next morning would feature the rundown until everybody in camp would have dreams about the play the following night. That would fix it.

It instead presaged one of the more irritating trends of the Twins season. It's basic stuff, and the infield is bollixing it on a regular basis.