One thing I overlooked last night while getting wrapped up the dramatic walk-off loss was the Twins breaking down on the basepaths in the ninth inning.

Oswaldo Arcia led off the ninth with a single and was replaced by pinch runner Aaron Hicks. Hicks was bunted over to second, then Chris Parmelee hammered a pitch to left-center.

Hicks froze at second as the outfielders raced for the ball. With one out, he's supposed to be positioned between second and third and take off if the ball falls in. The ball did fall in, but Hicks was too close to second to score.

``He has to score there," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said.

So Hicks pulled into third. Meanwhile, Parmelee, head down, rounds second.

``You had a guy who is not a triples hitter thinking he can hit a triple," Gardenhire said.

Parmelee rounded second and was halfway to third when he discovered Hicks was there. Parmelee was tagged out. Kurt Suzuki doubled in Hicks to give the Twins a lead at the time, but - One, Hicks should have scored on the previous play and Two, Suzuki's double should have scored Parmelee with an insurance run. And maybe the outcome of the game changes.

But there were two baserunning blunders on one play that cost the Twins a run in crunch time. Can't happen. he players have been talked to. And Gardenhire said Paul Molitor definitely will be working on them to make sure it doesn't happen again. There are more mistakes made on the basepaths than any other part of the game, but stuff like that has to be cleaned up.

``We got out of whack last night," Gardenhire said.

MONDAY'S STARTER

Anthony Swarzak is set to start on Monday against the Tigers, provided that Trevor May isn't sent to the showers early today. Sounds like A.J. Achter would be the long man if something happened to May early. the Twins need a good outing from May to avoid a 1-5 road trip.

POOR SAM

By the way, Samuel Deduno - remember him? - was claimed off waivers by Houston on Aug. 30. The man has pitched is one game - ONE - since joining the team. That was on Friday. He's been healthy. What are the Astros doing?

ETC.

Not sure if this has been spread around, but Twins GM Terry Ryan did say yesterday that he was planning to make Alex Meyer a September callup before he went down with shoulder fatigue. Sounds like the Twins were going to use him out of the bullpen, which would have been cool to watch. There was some thought to bringing Meyer up anyway for a couple bullpen sessions (he still needs work on his mechanics) but that was decided against.

Twins (62-86)

Danny Santana, SS
Kurt Suzuki, C
Joe Mauer, 1B
Trevor Plouffe, 3B
Oswaldo Arcia, RF
Josmil Pinto, DH
Chris Herrmann, LF
Eduardo Escobar, 2B
Jordan Schafer, CF

Trevor May, RHP

White Sox (68-80)

Adam Eaton, CF
Alexei Ramirez, SS
Jose Abreu, 1B
Conor Gillaspie, 3B
Avisail Garcia, RF
Andy Wilkins, DH
Dayan Vicideo, LF
Carlos Sanchez, 2B
Adrian Nieto, C

Hector Noesi, RHP