The Twins decided to "celebrate" Father's Day, the first day of summer and Junior's Half-Birthday with another efficient loss. If you're going to give up 8 runs, you might as well do it on a day you're shut out.

I don't think there's much question that Jake Arrieta had it going on Sunday. He didn't give the Twins much of a chance to score. However, the Twins have scored 3 runs or less in 6 of their last 7 games and 12 of their last 15 games. It's not been pretty.

The good news is the Twins continue to get good starting pitching. Kyle Gibson racked up a lot of pitches due to spotty command, but he managed to give up just 2 runs in 5 innings. This marked the eighth straight game that Twins starters have allowed no more than 3 runs. Also good news is that Gibson has a 38-13 K-BB ratio over his last 42 2/3 innings (7 starts).

More good news was that Byron Buxton finally got his first hit at Target Field. It was just a single with two outs and none one in the eighth inning of an 8-0 game, but hopefully, it will help him relax and start to have better at-bats and leave a better impression with management before Aaron Hicks is ready to come off the DL. Buxton also reached on an error, which mean he reached base four times (including 2 walks) in the last two games, so CF hasn't been a main reason the Twins scored just 2 runs total in these games.

The drop in offense has been so sudden and dramatic, it's difficult to see the Twins waiting much longer to try to help the pitching out. The Twins do have some internal options (Miguel Sano, Oswaldo Arcia, Danny Santana or Max Kepler) but unless the Twins are willing to play Eddie Rosario every day in CF, I'm not sure any of them will have much of an effect right now. Sano did hit a pretty dramatic home run on Sunday and Kepler is batting over .340, but Buxton's first taste of the big league's shows that there are no guarantees no matter how highly rated a prospect is, especially when they've never played in AAA. Arcia had a couple hits on Sunday, but he's still just hitting .200 since recovering from his injury. Santana is batting over .370, but the Twins might want to wait a little longer to make sure that he's ready to come back up.

The other good problem the Twins have is that they have 5 starters pitching well and will most likely will be needing to move 2 of them out of the rotation within a few weeks. Ervin Santana appears to be on track to return from suspension July 5. Ricky Nolasco appears to be avoiding surgery on his ankle for now, but no timetable has been set for him to return. However, when he does, he most likely will be put back in the rotation given his contract and his veteran status.

This will probably not be looked upon favorably by Twins fans, but the end result is the Twins have a logjam that they will need to figure out. After the bullpen meltdown today, my guess would be the temporary solution would be to put Trevor May and Tommy Milone in the bullpen and demote Aaron Thompson and Michael Tonkin. However, the Twins could make a more permanent solution by trading at least one starting pitcher for a left-handed bat. The most likely candidates for trade would by Mike Pelfrey and Milone, given their contract status and age. Milone isn't exactly old, but he doesn't have the upside or the raw stuff of May and Gibson. Pelfrey and Milone also aren't saddled with long-term contracts like Phil Hughes, Santana and Nolasco.

The Twins may wait until they have a better idea of when Nolasco will return before they pull the trigger on a deal. At the very least, I don't think it will be long before Thompson is demoted unless he starts to show dramatically better results. I also hope the Twins will drop the 13th pitcher so they can bolster the bench and allow Molitor more options to squeeze out some more runs from the anemic offense.