Pitcher flops, and fielders do, too, as Twins lose finale to Royals

You know who's really getting sick of watching the Twins lose? And who sounds like he's beginning to wonder whether he's the only one?

Their manager.

The Twins committed four errors Sunday, and it could have been six or seven. Hector Santiago's third start with his new team was no better than his first two, and Kansas City's Edinson Volquez pitched his team to victory over the Twins for the seventh start in a row.

And after the world champions' 11-4 rout was done, and the Twins finished an optimism-killing 2-5 homestand with a particularly embarrassing loss, Paul Molitor openly questioned whether his last-place team understands that the season might be lost but it's not over.

"We have a lot of people who have a lot to play for. There's a lot of things up in the air," Molitor said, in what sounded like a warning. "I hope they understand that."

The Twins have invested a lot of effort in training their top prospects to avoid the sort of clumsy defense they exhibited Sunday — which wouldn't be an issue if it was an occasional hiccup. But the kicked grounders, bobbled throws, even a dropped catch this time, have been a season-long curse. The Twins have been charged with 92 errors this season; no other AL team has more than 78.

"You don't get too overly critical when you know the work's being put in," Molitor said of the Twins defense before the game. "I'm a big believer that you learn as much from the mistakes you make as the good plays you make."

After the game, though, he sounded as though he wished his team wouldn't have quite so many teaching moments.

"You would hope that there's some reflection each and every day on things you do well, things you need to improve on. You constantly can learn from what transpires in the course of a ballgame," Molitor said. "When you get beat around consecutive times in [Thursday's] doubleheader and today, falling [far] behind, it's going to be tough mentally to challenge yourself to stay focused. But that's just part of the deal."

Brian Dozier homered for the third consecutive game, the second time he's done that this month and the third time this season, and Eduardo Escobar doubled home two more runs off Volquez. But the Twins were undone by Santiago's sudden collapse with two outs in the fourth, when he let five consecutive batters reach base, capped by Paulo Orlando's three-run, upper-deck homer.

"You get two big outs, you're one pitch away. It seems like it happens a lot with us," Santiago said, and he's right: The Twins' 264 runs allowed with two outs are by far the most in the majors. "I don't know if hitters' approach is changing, but as a group, we've been struggling with that as long as I've been here."

Yet the worst part of Sunday's loss isn't that Santiago's ERA since being traded Aug. 1 stands at 9.42. No, that would be the defense, the tepid way the Twins handled the ball. Left fielder Robbie Grossman kicked a Salvador Perez RBI single, enabling Perez to take second base and make Santiago's trouble worse. "It definitely puts a little more pressure on you, because now you're trying to make some really good pitches and not let a bloop single score him," Santiago said. "You want to pick up your teammates."

Two innings later, Jorge Polanco let a double-play grounder slip under his glove at third base; two batters later, he couldn't corral an in-between hop for another error. Then Grossman rushed forward to make a running catch of Kendrys Morales' sinking liner, but the ball bounced out of his glove.

A couple of other grounders were mishandled, too, but ruled hits. Still, the Twins pushed their total of unearned runs allowed to 56, which easily leads the American League.

"One of the more difficult games to watch us play. [We had a] chance to make a lot of plays, and we didn't make very many of them," Molitor said. "You see the ball start to come out of gloves, and we're not fielding balls cleanly, I'm sure it becomes mental to some degree."