As disappointing as Tuesday's game was for Twins fans — losing 1-0 and losing the divisional title to the White Sox — this must be said:

That game did not cost them the divisional crown.

Think, for example, of the Aug. 4 game in Seattle, when Glen Perkins and the flammable middle relief turned a 6-0 lead after five innings, a 6-1 lead after six, into a 11-6 loss. Or the next day, when the Twins rallied to take a 7-6 lead in the top of the eighth and gave it back in the bottom of the inning.

Ot the 12-inning loss at Kansas City on Aug. 10, when Adam Everett threw a routine grounder away to allow the Royals to tie the score. Or the three blown saves Joe Nathan had during the John McCain Memorial Road Trip. Or that horrendous two-game April series in Detroit (April 14, up 9-5 in the eighth, lose 11-8; April 15, up 4-3 in the eighth, lose 6-5.) Or the loss on Saturday to Kansas City, chronicled a few posts ago, thrown away because Matt Guerrier was pitching when he should have been on the bench. Or...

But you have the idea already.

In some respects, this blog has chronicled failure — I saw, well before the reporters and columnists for the metro papers, well before the Twins organization — the fatal weakness in the bullpen once Pat Neshek went down and Juan Rincon washed out. There simply weren't enough reliable arms in the Minnesota bullpen. And, in part because nobody else seemed to see it, I started ranting about it, and kept ranting, because even after the Twins added Eddie Guardado (a move I applauded but that did not help much) and called up Jose Mijares, the Twins kept on losing games in middle relief.

Ron Gardenhire did a lot of things well this season. Some of his decisions were debatable — for example, the decision to open the season with Carlos Gomez rather than Denard Span in center field. Some of them were stubbornly misguided — for example, the concurrent decisions to use Guerrier in key situations while burying Craig Breslow.

The Twins lost this division title not because Nick Blackburn gave up a home run to Jim Thome in the seventh inning Tuesday, and not because the Twins got just two hits off John Danks and Bobby Jenks. They lost this division title because Gardenhire never fully straightened out his bullpen.