The Minnesota Twins brought Kyle Farmer back this season in the hopes that he could play several positions and be a positive influence in the clubhouse. Those facts persist, but he’s been a scratch in the lineup, and it doesn’t appear to be improving anytime soon.
With Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis locked into the left side of Minnesota’s infield, Rocco Baldelli was never going to want to start Kyle Farmer on a continuous basis. As a rotational infielder, he has value in numerous positions, and if he can maintain his career averages, he’ll have a pulse at the plate. The issue for Minnesota, and Farmer, is that he was thrust into a starting job and has completely lost his bearings.
Farmer has routinely started at the hot corner while Correa and Lewis were sidelined due to injuries. Willi Castro has taken over at shortstop, and while José Miranda has also been used at third base, Farmer has been used more frequently than his production would suggest. That performance consists of a 3-for-45 start with only one extra-base hit and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 13:6.
It’s not like Farmer is having bad luck, either. He has a ridiculous.094 BABIP, but he seems to earn it. He hasn’t discovered a single barrel containing 32 batted balls. His hard-hit rate is a career-low 21.9%, 13% below his career average. When he puts the ball in play, he has a stunningly awful 62.5% ground ball percentage, and his 12.5% line drive rate provides him absolutely little chance of success through trajectory.
It’s not like pitchers are trying anything different with him. He’s seeing the same pitches he’s always seen, and for a guy who has played 431 big-league games, the book is well-established. His pursuit rate is not unusual, and his whiff rate is somewhat in line with career averages.
If something stands out, it could be a sense of inactivity. Farmer appears to be hunting at the plate, swinging at only 54% of pitches in the zone and with a career-low overall swing rate of 44%. He’s seeing a career-high 67.9% first-pitch strikes, and opposing pitchers are quickly putting him down in the count. If he is seeking for a single pitch or location, the results are unsatisfactory.
It’s implausible that a 33-year-old would suddenly become this fried, but nothing about Farmer’s current situation works. The Twins wouldn’t have had to pay $6 million on the open market to keep him, and he seemed like an unneeded cost even before the season started. The senior utility player isn’t worth a roster place right now, and if Miranda does anything to grasp the opportunity, it may come to fruition when Correa comes from the injured list.
Right now, it’s just an 18-game sample, a month that Farmer will want to erase from his record book forever. A -9 OPS+ doesn’t even begin to describe the futility, and getting an RBI while executing a Javier Báez imitation on Wednesday night pretty well wraps it up.
If Farmer is to remain on this roster for the entire season, his output must improve, regardless of who else is available.
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