A "month of hope" for the Twins is about to begin. Players will be called up and others will be cast aside, or to Houston in the case of Samuel Deduno. We can be fairly certain the Twins will again lose more than 90 games – but it would take their worst month of the season for them to lose 100. Small blessings, huh.

Don't take anything you see this month seriously. If you're the kind of person prone to get excited by the late season, I'm here to remind you of Chris Parmelee (2011) and Josmil Pinto (2013), to name two. If you're that kind of person, watch more football or take a Community Ed class or something.

Change from within isn't going to help the Twins. I'm doing my best to believe in the month of Kennys Vargas and the half-season of Danny Santana, but even those positives bring questions. We have no clue whether Santana is a major league caliber shortstop because the Twins forced themselves, through lousy roster management, to put him in center field – where Byron Buxton is expected to play into the 2020s.

And Vargas, if he is as real as he looks, creates issues about how to handle the first base and DH positions into the future. But any Vargas/Mauer/Pinto/whomever/whatever/however debate about filling those spots detracts from the other real issues facing a team that has slipped into mediocrity on so many levels. For many, the timeline to competence has been pushed back for another year for all sorts of reasons, including the injuries that rendered Buxton and Miguel Sano unavailable, and has apparently hindered some of the top pitching prospects we've been talking about.

Saturday's minor-league news was that prospect Alex Meyer was pulled from his start in Rochester after only a few batters. Sunday's news was that he was placed on the disabled list. August's news, in addition to Buxton's scary-as-heck concussion, was that Trevor May didn't look ready for the majors despite all of the clamoring for his promotion. Five starts, 19 innings, 44 base runners. Splat!

I'm not talking solutions right now. I don't have the energy to add voice to a debate that dances around the fringes of fixing mediocrity. Anyone who wants to debate Jordan Schafer can leave me out of it. And I don't want to dip even one toe into the Gardy-created discussion about whether pressure over the All-Star Game contributed to Joe Mauer's substandard performance.

If you missed that one, here it is. If your reaction is bleepity-bleeping-bleep, join the club.

My response for now is silence and apathy. I received some thoughtful emails when I asked for suggestions to fix the Twins, and I'll be sharing some of them on the blog now and then. I've taken to following the Twins, more than anything, by looking at the in-game box scores on the MLB web site. Ricky Nolasco getting smoked again and Anthony Swarzak adding gasoline – Sunday's action in Baltimore – go down more easily that way. I've got a Fantasy Football title to defend, a college class to teach and lots of other things going on.

Refusing to invest in a flawed product is the best message I can send right now.