Baker took a no-hitter into the seventh inning but never recorded another out. Instead of a place in history, he ended up with an ugly reminder, in the form of a five-run seventh inning and his fourth straight loss, of the need to keep hitters from leaning over the plate.

And the Twins ? They absorbed lots of information over a frequently thrilling but ultimately unsatisfying weekend. Let Michael Cuddyer take the final exam:

Lesson one: "That's a lot better team over there" than it used to be, he said of the Royals, whose spot atop the American League Central after winning their second straight Metrodome series is proof of that.

Lesson two: "We're making too many mistakes that winning teams can't make," Cuddyer continued, and while the indictment wasn't quite as full Sunday as the night before, he's got a point. From the 0-2 fastball Baker served up to Jose Guillen (a pitch immediately turned into a titanic three-run homer) to the game-deciding double off the wall that Luis Ayala allowed, the Twins were awash this weekend in out-of-character misplays.

Lesson three: "The game can change quick. You're riding on cruise control, no-hit Baseball, and bam, it changes," Cuddyer said. "As a young team, you've got to realize you always have to put the throttle down."

Apparently so. Kansas City went from zero hits through six innings to seven runs over the final three.

But that last one serves as a good epitaph for this entire three-game series, too. The Twins were riding a three-game winning streak and the euphoria of Joe Mauer's spectacular return on Friday, but everything changed abruptly a day later. They squandered plenty of opportunities to win on Saturday but fell apart with misplays and missed pitches.

And they appeared to have Sunday's game locked up, too, but let it slip away when Baker wore down and the bullpen, which appears in disarray every time anyone is asked to pitch more than once every few days, was unable to stanch the Royals' rally. So what could have been a 5-1 homestand devolved into a 3-3 stalemate, with the Twins headed to Detroit and Baltimore this week.

"It's disappointing. It's frustrating," Cuddyer said. "But if we clean up our mistakes, we'll be OK."

They appeared more than OK after prying four runs out of Kansas City starter Gil Meche while Baker smoked the Royals. The Twins' right-hander was so dominant, the Royals couldn't even hit the ball fair in the fifth inning, fouling out to third, first and right.

"He was fantastic," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Everything was down, his fastball was jumping."

"He had real sharp stuff early on," Royals shortstop Willie Bloomquist said.

But despite retiring 18 of 19 hitters (with only a walk blemishing his perfection), Baker hadn't planted the seeds, he sees now, for late-inning success. "I wasn't keeping guys off the plate enough," he said. "I noticed they were beginning to lean out a little bit on my fastball."

So when Bloomquist disappointed the Metrodome crowd of 31,845 by lining a 1-1 slider just out of second baseman Brendan Harris' reach to lead off the seventh, and Mark Teahen followed with a ground-ball single to right, Guillen was in position to really mess things up.

"I should have kept him honest, should have come inside a little more, (before) that at-bat," Baker said. "The pitch was up a little bit. If he's honest, if he's taking a swing like he normally would, it wouldn't have happened."

What happened was Guillen's 400-foot home run, suddenly turning the Twins' easy win into a battle. Two softer hits later, Baker was done. He left with a lead, but Ayala dispensed with that quickly, serving up a 3-2 fastball that Alberto Callaspo bashed to the left-field wall, scoring the tying and go-ahead runs. R.A. Dickey, the last reliever available, allowed a run in the eighth and another in the ninth.

"It's kind of hard to see it right now, but I did make a lot of good pitches. I was more consistent down in the zone," Baker said. "It's frustrating, but I have to take the positives out of this."

So do the Twins .