BALTIMORE – The sinking pop fly got under his glove. The critical fastball was a little too high. Once Miguel Sano sorts out which levels he can handle, the Twins should be OK.

But on Wednesday, Sano's aggressiveness, both at the plate and in the field, cost his team. The second-year slugger allowed a bloop hit to get past him, costing the Twins a run, then swung at and missed a third strike with the tying run on base. Combined with Kyle Gibson's unsteady first start, it was enough to hand the Twins a 4-2 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards and deliver their fifth 0-2 start in the past six seasons.

"I need to be patient about the game," Sano said. "If you don't have patience, you can never win."

Sano is normally blessed with plenty of patience, as the two walks he drew in his first two trips to the plate demonstrated on Wednesday. But in the second inning, with J.J. Hardy aboard after a two-out walk, Sano came hustling in to try and catch Jonathan Schoop's shallow pop fly. He dived for the ball out of desperation, and it bounced off his glove and rolled about 10 feet.

That was enough to allow Hardy to score from first base, a mistake manager Paul Molitor attributed to Sano's inexperience in right field. "It's all easy in hindsight," Molitor shrugged. "The more you get experience, the more you understand when that runner's on first with two outs, the thing that's going to cost you is if you don't come up with the play. There are times to be more aggressive than others. … Obviously he's still learning."

Molitor had coach Butch Davis, the team's outfield instructor, talk to Sano about the play.

Twins starter Kyle Gibson had trouble finding the plate, walking five in five innings.

"He told me to stay up, stay back if I'm not sure about it," Sano said. "If I am sure, he has no problem with me diving for it, but he doesn't want to give up any extra bases."

No, they want him to collect those bases for himself. Like, say, when he comes to the plate with two out in the seventh inning, and the tying runs on base. But Orioles reliever Brad Brach, aware of Sano's habit of seeing plenty of pitches, wasted no time attacking him. Three fastballs, each of them 94 miles per hour, went whistling by, and Sano uncharacteristically took powerful cuts at all three.

After fouling off the first one, though, Sano completely missed the next two — letter-high and tempting.

"I tried to be too aggressive for the pitch. I need to have patience at that moment so I can put it in play," Sano said. The last one was "a little high. A little lower, and I can hit it out."

BOXSCORE: Baltimore 4, Twins 2

It would have made a big difference, considering the Twins were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position (and are now 1-for-12 on the season). But the loss was hardly Sano's fault, and he made a couple of nice running catches to offset his mistake. No, the biggest problem was Gibson's lack of command of the strike zone, and the Twins' inability to hit Yovani Gallardo, making his Orioles debut.

Only 58 of the third-year righthander's 105 pitches were strikes, and on a chilly night in Baltimore, the Orioles had little trouble waiting for Gibson to throw something hittable. He walked four batters unintentionally (five total) and, with his curveball and slider not functioning correctly, gave up seven hits besides.

The result: That Sano-aided run in the second inning. A leadoff double by Hardy in the third, followed by a groundout that moved him to third and a sacrifice fly to left by Joey Rickard. A walk to Mark Trumbo in the fifth inning, followed by a run-scoring double by Matt Wieters. And Gibson made a third-inning mistake with a 1-2 slider that Chris Davis, the majors' home-run king for two of the past three seasons, deposited beyond the wall in straightaway center.

"To be right back [feeling] kind of how I felt last year, it's a little frustrating," Gibson said. "The goal is still to cut down walks and get ahead of guys, and I didn't do that very well [Wednesday]."