LOS ANGELES — Kyle Farmer got his start at Dodger Stadium, so he knows what he's talking about.
"When you play here, you can never count those guys out at any point in the game," Farmer warned during his homecoming. "Anything can happen. The crowd can get behind them, and then it's loud and there's a lot of anxiety out there."
Emilio Pagán felt that anxiety on Wednesday, and by the time he was done, so did the Twins and their fans. Pagán walked the first hitter he faced in the seventh inning to load the bases, walked the next hitter to force in the tying run, then surrendered a 407-foot grand slam to straightaway center field, sending the Twins to a bitterly disappointing 7-3 loss to the Dodgers.
"I thought that was a pretty good spot for EP to get out there and attack those guys," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "It didn't go the way we wanted it to."
Not even close. Dodgers outfielder James Outman had the big hit off of Pagán, who had not blown a save or even allowed a home run this season. But even Pagán, who blew seven saves last season, five of them on devastating home runs, conceded that the memory of these throw-away-a-win moments all but erases any positive results that came before it.
"How I've been throwing doesn't matter" after a loss like this, he said. "But moving forward, I have to lean on that. My stuff is really good. I just didn't have it today."
And thus, the Twins don't have have their first-ever winning series against the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
The game also took a physical toll on the Twins. Nick Gordon fractured his shin when he fouled a pitch off his leg in the fifth inning, Jorge Polanco left early with hamstring soreness and Joey Gallo was replaced in the ninth during his at-bat when he fouled a pitch off his leg.