At least that's over.

The Twins' 14-game, 15-day road trip ended in rather predictable fashion, with a let's-get-this-over-with shutout loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The good news is that the Twins are just a half-game worse off in the standing than when they cleared out of Minnesota to make way for the politicians, the protesters and the tear gas. The bad news is that they went just 5-9 —a far cry from the admittedly optimistic 10-4 projection offered here at the start.

They weren't that far from 10-4. A little bit of catching the ball here, a little bit better pitching out of the pen there, and it could easily have been 10-4. The first eight losses came on a total of 12 runs, and Joe Nathan blew three saves himself. Yeah, he had some help from the defense in that last one, but he got himself in trouble by not throwing strikes.

Two points of note from Thursday:

* Matt Tolbert started at third for the second straight game. Brian Buscher, who had seemed pretty secure in the lion's share of the third base platoon, DH'd Wednesday, didn't play Thursday.

The Wednesday lineup was understandable: A.J. Burnett, who started that game for the Jays, eats up righties, and Ron Gardenhire wanted to get as many left-handed hitters in the lineup as possible. But starting Tolbert over Buscher on Thursday might indicate something else.

Gardenhire was talking, when Tolbert got hurt back in May, about giving him regular playing time. Since then, Alexi Casilla has taken over second base, and Nick Punto has been in the lineup every game for more than a month. If Gardy's sufficently intent on making Tolbert an everyday player to bury Buscher, he's making a mistake. Yeah, Tolbert's hitting .270 for the season — but it's a pretty empty .270, with an OPS about 70 points worse than Buscher's .