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John Shipley: After traumatic beanball, Twins’ Kyle Farmer gets back in the box

john shipley, pioneer press
·4 min read

After being hit in the face by a 92 mph fastball, Kyle Farmer wasn’t eager to look in a mirror. But, dazed on painkillers and still in his uniform, the Twins infielder decided he wanted to see what he looked like before undergoing emergency surgery.

“I took a selfie,” he said.

While the snap was in fact taken by Farmer himself, calling it a selfie is a little deceiving. The photo, still on his mobile phone, is not a celebration. He is not smiling, and at any rate there are few teeth involved.

“It was not pretty,” he said.

If the selfie were shown in public, it would be preceded by a warning.

“I’m trying not to think about it anymore,” Farmer said Wednesday at CHS Field. “It’s part of the game.”

On a rehab assignment with the Saints, Farmer took three at-bats in Tuesday’s 11-5 loss to the Nashville Sounds, and if you didn’t know about the Lucas Giolito fastball that sent him to the hospital on April 12, you’d never have known they were his first at-bats since he was face down in the Target Field batter’s box choking on four of his bottom teeth.

Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey was at CHS Field on Tuesday to watch Farmer’s first at-bats. He came out swinging, as usual.

In his first plate appearance, he popped out to right. In his last, he grounded sharply to the shortstop. On Wednesday, he was St. Paul’s designated hitter in the second of a six-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate.

“A lot of people asked if I was nervous; I really wasn’t,” Farmer said. “I was just trying not to think about it and just kinda went out there and did my business and followed the same routine I normally do.”

Farmer, 32, is not unaccustomed to being hit by pitches. Before he was traded to the Twins last November — for minor league right-hander Casey Legumina — he was hit a total of 34 times in his two full seasons. But not like this. Giolito’s fastball, clocked at 91.6 mph, rode up and in, and before Farmer could turn away, it hit him flush in the mouth.

When he was finally able to get up, Farmer stumbled off the field with help and was immediately put into an ambulance. Once inside, he was given fentanyl through an IV. The ensuing surgery included 35 stitches to his face and securing four bottom teeth with metal braces.

“I woke up and I felt like someone had just killed me,” he said.

He couldn’t sleep on his side or eat for two days. Three weeks later, he still has a fat lower lip, and that metal keeping his lower teeth in place is scheduled to come out on Monday.

“It’s always in the back of your mind, the possibility of getting hit, but you try not to think about it,” he said. “This one affected me a lot more than the others because, I mean, surgery and stuff like that — pictures and watching the video of it.”

Maybe the most unexpected part of the whole experience for Farmer was that Giolito, who grabbed his face with both hands when Farmer went down, never reached out.

“Strange,” Farmer said. “I don’t know why he didn’t reach out. I’ve never had any beef with him. It is what it is.”

Friend Justin Turner was hit in the face by a pitch during a spring training game in March. A teammate with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2016 and 2017, he did reach out to Farmer with advice.

What did he say?

“ ‘Just get back in there. It’s your job and you have to deal with it. Just be a ballplayer,’ ” Farmer said.

That’s what he’s doing. He was 0 for 3 with a walk and a pair of strikeouts in Wednesday’s 5-3 victory over the Sounds. The plan is to give him a week with the Saints before he’s activated from the 10-day injured list.

“I hope I face someone throwing a hundred (mph) down here,” Farmer said. “I’d like to see that. I don’t know. You just have to block it out and keep going, keep grinding.”

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