What the Heck Happened to Kyle Farmer, and Is It Fixable?

With Carlos Correa and Royce Lewis locked into the left side of Minnesota’s infield, there was never going to be a desire for Rocco Baldelli to consistently start Kyle Farmer. As a rotational infielder, he has value in multiple spots, and if he could keep up with career averages, he'd have a pulse at the plate. The problem for Minnesota, and Farmer, is that he’s been pushed into a starting role and completely lost his way.

With injuries taking Correa and Lewis out of the lineup, Farmer has consistently drawn starts at the hot corner. Willi Castro has assumed shortstop duties, and while José Miranda has gotten run at third base as well, it’s been Farmer more often than the production would warrant. That production, namely, is a 3-for-45 start in which he has just one extra-base hit and a 13-to-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

It’s not as though Farmer is getting unlucky, either. He has a ridiculous .094 BABIP, but somehow, he deserves it. He hasn’t found a single barrel, with 32 batted balls. His hard-hit rate is a career-worst 21.9%; that checks in 13% below his career average. When putting the ball in play, he’s generated a truly horrible 62.5% ground ball rate, and his 12.5% line drive rate gives him almost zero chance to find success through trajectory.

It’s not as though pitchers are doing anything entirely different to him. He’s seeing the same diet of pitches he always has, and for a guy who has played 431 big-league games, the book is well-established. His chase rate isn’t out of whack, and his whiff rate is largely in line with career averages, as well.

If there is something that stands out, it may be a level of passivity. Swinging at just 54% of pitches in the zone, and with a career-low 44% overall swing rate, Farmer seems to be up at the dish searching. He’s seeing a career-high 67.9% first-pitch strikes; opposing pitchers are immediately putting him behind in the count. If he’s looking for one pitch, or one location, the results certainly aren’t bearing fruit.

It’s unlikely that a 33-year-old suddenly became quite this cooked, but nothing about how Farmer is going right now works. The Twins wouldn’t have had to pay $6 million on the open market to keep him, and he looked like an unnecessary expense even before the year began. Playing like he is now, the veteran utility player isn’t worthy of a roster spot, and if Miranda does anything to seize the opportunity, that may come to fruition when Correa returns from the injured list.

Right now, it’s just an 18-game sample, and a month that Farmer will want to rip from his record book forever. A -9 OPS+ really doesn’t even do the futility justice, and generating an RBI while doing a Javier Báez impression on Wednesday night all but sums it up.

If Farmer is going to remain on this roster all season long, the production has to turn a corner, no matter who else is available.