MINNEAPOLIS -- Jake Cave lined a two-out, go-ahead single into right field in the sixth inning Monday, and the Twins’ dugout roared in approval as Cave yelled at first base and the Twins finally collected a clutch hit nearly a week in the making.

The jubilation lasted only a matter of minutes before Luis Robert crushed a tape-measure shot far beyond the center-field wall to tie things back up. Later, in the ninth, that fleeting thrill seemed all the more distant when Max Kepler dropped a routine fly ball in right field, giving the White Sox the small window they needed to open the floodgates in a game-winning rally.

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Though the Minnesota offense found some much-needed life thanks to a trio of White Sox errors in an early three-run inning, the South Siders punched back hard, a reminder that in this new American League Central, nothing will come easy for the Twins. Instead of the bats, the pitching and fielding -- the bedrocks of the team’s early success -- gave way in an 8-5 loss to the White Sox that extended Minnesota’s losing streak to six.

“Nothing's coming easy,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “When things are going well, sometimes even when you're not necessarily playing ideal baseball, things tend to seem to work out, and it seems like the opposite is going on right now. ... It's not like we can point to one specific thing. It's several different things that do seem a little out of sync. It's our responsibility to figure that out."

Frustration was evident everywhere as the Twins fell to 2 1/2 games behind the division-leading Sox. It was a breaking point -- to the extent where Baldelli gathered his club for a rare team meeting behind closed doors after the loss.

Each of Minnesota’s first four pitchers -- Rich Hill, Tyler Duffey, Tyler Clippard and Taylor Rogers -- yelled curses as they exited the field, Hill having suffered another short start and Clippard and May having each coughed up a lead. Eddie Rosario slammed his helmet to the ground after he ended the seventh inning with a strikeout, and Marwin Gonzalez showed similar frustration after he was called out on strikes to end the eighth.

All the while, Minnesota saw the White Sox, suddenly the offensive juggernaut of the division, find the clutch homers and timely hits that the Twins themselves enjoyed last year -- first, with Robert’s game-tying shot in the seventh, then with Robert’s go-ahead double and Nomar Mazara’s two-run single in the ninth off Taylor Rogers that took advantage of Kepler’s miscue.

“When we start focusing on a lot of other things and having a lot of thoughts going through your head, you tend to not do the subtle things and maybe even the subconscious things that lead to performance and playing well,” Baldelli said.

“There’s, of course, some level of frustration. Guys are competitive and the guys want to go out there and they know what they’re capable of. And we haven’t shown what we’re capable of lately. There’s certainly some frustration, and rightfully so.”

The Twins hadn’t scored more than three runs in a game since Aug. 23 and hadn’t plated more than two in an inning since the day before that. They didn’t fully build their early three-run rally in the second inning themselves, but it was a needed jump-start when the Sox made three miscues in the field -- including one by starter Lucas Giolito -- and the Twins took advantage with a Luis Arraez RBI single and a two-run fielder’s choice-turned-error.

But with the step forward, there was another step back on Monday night.

The Twins stood pat at Monday’s Trade Deadline because they felt that the group they needed to earn a playoff spot and make a run in October is already here. The pieces just haven’t quite fit together, and even with the misalignment of their offense and pitching, they still had a gritty battle against the division-leading White Sox.

They know the preseason division favorite is somewhere in there. They just didn’t find it for another day.

“Guys are putting in the effort, they’re putting in the time before the game,” Hill said. “I think we’ve just got to go back out there and kind of restart a little bit.”

“You're playing just well enough to just lose,” Baldelli said. “We haven't been playing winning baseball. ... But I do think there's a direction for our team to go. We have all the ability that we need. We have all the players we need. We talked about not making excuses in Spring Training. We never will. We're not going to make excuses. We have to play better, and our guys know that.”