Postgame: Watching young players make mistakes and wondering if they will learn from them

The Twins are going to lose 100 games, There's no way this group of players can suddenly figure out a way to go 4-4 over their last eight games and avoid lighting up the right-hand column for triple digits.

There were a few more teaching moments on the field during the Twins' 5-4 loss to Seattle.

The big one was Trevor Plouffe's at bat with the bases loaded in the fifth. Seattle reliever Jeff Gray had just walked Danny Valencia on four pitches and fell behind Plouffe 2-0. Plouffe then chased a couple bad pitches before tapping back to the mound.

``What was that? Six straight balls and not really close?" Twiins manager Ron Gardenhire said, ``Just ask him about that, what his thought process was. Those are the types of things you have to learn from. Those cost you ballgames. That guy was in trouble and we took him out of trouble.''

Plouffe said his approach in that situation was poor.

``I just got too aggressive,'' Plouffe said. ``I saw the pitch, it had some movement on it and it was in the zone. And it came out of the zone.''

Gardenhire's point was that unless a pitch is grooved there, let the pitcher walk you. Plouffe also was responsible for Seattle's first baserunner when he dropped Ichiro's grounder in the fourth.

In the seventh inning, Ichiro sent a sinking liner to right that Joe Benson had no business diving for but did, and missed., That allowed Trayvon Robinson to score from first. Benson has done that a couple times during his visit to the majors.

``Yeah, just being a little overzealous, trying to make a play," Gardenhire said. ``An aggressive mistake. That should just be a base hit. He's trying to make a play. He's a game on kid, just a little misguided dive. You can take aggressive mistakes.They can learn from those."

Benson drove in a run with a single and his physical ability is obvious. But he has some rough edges to his game too. He working on them, though. He's trying to take better at-bats and has been breaking down video with hitting coach Joe Vavra.