The Twins were 8-20 when Star Tribune columnist Chip Scoggins penned the column that gave us the line of the year: "Total system failure." It was uttered by Twins owner Jim Pohlad in the context of describing all that had gone wrong in the first month of the season for a team that had playoff aspirations going into the year.

If the first month of the season was defined by a wait-and-see approach, the second month has been a more frantic search for anything that might get them out of this mess. And all it has done is proven Pohlad correct on two fronts: This is a total system failure, and there's no easy way out of it because an answer has not presented itself.

The point hit home when I discovered this bit of awful symmetry late Sunday night: The Twins were 8-20 before the "total system failure" column and they are exactly 8-20 since then.

Read Michael Rand's blog at startribune.com/randball. mrand@startribune.com