![]() We still do," said pitcher Brock Stewart, a Dodgers teammate who this spring has been reunited with Farmer in the Twins clubhouse. He received pitches really well, and we had a good relationship. Though he was never considered the equal of fellow catching prospects Yasmani Grandal or Austin Barnes as they came up through the Dodgers system, he earned respect for how well he adapted to a completely foreign role. I had to get six stitches, and they didn't have any numbing medicine, so they stitched me up without any painkiller." A guy once swung and missed and hit me in the head. I got three concussions from foul tips, and a broken bone. Catching is a big deal, where you're not only taking care of your hitting and fielding, but you're taking care of your pitchers, too," Farmer said. He learned how to set up hitters, and frame pitches to steal strikes. He learned how to go over a scouting report and commit it to memory. He changed his workout routine and put on 30 pounds in the weight room. The thing is, seeing no other route to the big leagues, he did. Woke up the next morning, didn't feel any part of my body, I was so sore. "My first-ever game as a catcher, I had my shin guards on backwards. "It was that or give up baseball," Farmer said. Off he went to rookie ball in Ogden, Utah, a second-hand Gerald Laird mitt and a grudging willingness to learn serving as his new best friends. But with his eligibility expired, he had no choice when the Dodgers spent an eighth-round pick on him, then told him to get comfortable with chest protectors and catcher's masks. It was maddening to Farmer, a lifelong infielder who never played an inning behind the plate in college. … He has really good hands and is a smart player and can figure things out and there's enough arm to go behind the plate." "And all the discussion among the scouts was about making him a catcher, because he has the skill set for it. "I watched Farmer play shortstop at the University of Georgia," said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, who in the spring of 2013 was scouting for the Rays. The consensus about him didn't change, however. It seemed so random and unpalatable to Farmer, he ducked out of the 2012 draft after his junior year and returned to the Bulldogs as a senior. Yet scout after scout watched him play middle infield for one of the SEC's best teams and concluded that those sure hands, those steady instincts, that powerful arm belonged behind the plate. But when I play infield, it feels like I'm playing baseball." "The way I put it is, when I was catching, it felt like a job. "It sometimes felt like I was shouting, 'This is not what I want!' " Farmer, a shortstop his entire life until he was drafted by the Dodgers, said of his minor league ascension as an unwillingly converted catcher. Yet here's the weirdest part of that zig-zag route to Target Field: It was one he largely disliked, and even actively tried to avoid. He was a freshman All-America and owns the best fielding percentage of any University of Georgia shortstop, ever. His first time testing that arm on an MLB mound, he retired three All-Stars, including an MVP. His first big-league at-bat was a walkoff winner in front of 53,000 screaming celebrants. Farmer at 32 has already lived an incredibly eclectic, even enchanted, life in baseball, all of it somehow leading to his spit-shined role in 2023 as the Twins' most trusted utility player. Farmer once feared his baseball career would turn out the same way - a whole bunch of work without much to show for it.
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