Scouts and talent evaluators in sports make mistakes all the time. In spite of advanced statistical methods, numerous sets of eyeballs and various other factors, it's impossible to predict exactly how one athlete will fare at the highest level of competition. Twins GM Terry Ryan, who was not in charge of the team when it signed Tsuyoshi Nishioka, acknowledged that difficulty in a story explaining why Nishi was being sent to Rochester.

"We make mistakes all the time," Ryan said. "I'm not saying this is a mistake because he's down at Triple-A. And we're going to end up seeing if we can get [him] resurrected and get him back up here."

The question, though, is how an organization misses this badly on a player. In terms of relative salary, Nishioka's contract and and posting fee -- about $14 million combined over three seasons -- won't break the bank or the Twins' financial back. In terms of Dome dollars, it's about the same as the $6.6 million they gave Mike Lamb over two seasons before 2008, only to dump him in the middle of the first year.

But we're still befuddled when it comes to the obvious gap between what scouts must have seen -- or wanted to see -- in Nishioka and what the rest of the free world has seen on the field. Per Joe C's story last September, examining what went wrong with Nishioka:

Basically, the Twins want him to be the kind of player they expected from their scouting reports. Howard Norsetter, Twins international scouting coordinator, first saw him play in 2005. Between then and last offseason, six Twins scouts watched Nishioka. When major league teams found out Nishioka was going to be available last year, the Twins did more homework, contacting coaches and others familiar with him.

They believe in their reports, so it doesn't appear any of their scouts are going to walk the plank over the decision to sign Nishioka.

"Anything we say is going to sound defensive," said Mike Radcliff, Twins vice president in charge of player personnel. "We expect him to be better next year."

We don't know exactly how all those scouts felt, but suffice to say enough liked him for the Twins to make the investment. Are they to blame?

Did Bill Smith -- who did pay the price by losing his job for moves like the Nishioka disaster -- play a trump card and force a piece that didn't fit, knowing his team was desperate for shortstop stability?

Did something simply happen to Nishioka along the way, turning him from a smooth-fielding Japanese batting champ into a bumbler who couldn't even survive spring training, let alone lock down a spot as a utility infielder?

Was Minnesota just the wrong fit, somehow not offering Nishioka the right combination of coaching and structure to ease his transition?

There are probably elements of all those things at play, making this even more frustrating. There is no "a-ha!" moment, no magic bullet. Unless something changes dramatically at Rochester, it will go into the books as a big red mark on a lot or résumés.