Taj Bradley didn’t just settle in with the Twins this year - he forced his way into the center of the conversation.
The right-hander has turned a four-pitch mix into a full-blown problem for hitters, pairing a fastball that can climb above 100 mph with a cutter, curveball and split-finger that all play off the same hard look. The result has been a steady stream of ugly swings, late decisions and strikeouts piling up fast.
That wasn’t the story when Minnesota landed Bradley from the Tampa Bay Rays at the 2025 trade deadline in exchange for reliever Griffin Jax. The Rays had already sent him to Triple-A Durham on July 24, and after the trade he was assigned to Triple-A St.
Paul. He didn’t get the call to MLB until August 24, and his first six starts for the Twins were rough: an 0-2 record and a 6.61 ERA.
Even before the deal, Bradley’s season had been trending in the wrong direction. In his previous 13 starts, he went 3-4 with a 4.87 ERA, a stretch marked by a drop in dominance and command issues. That left plenty of doubt about what Minnesota had really gotten, especially with questions hanging over his role in the club’s 2026 rotation.
Now, 31 starts and 178 1/3 innings later, Bradley has answered in a big way. He became just the tenth Twins pitcher to reach 200 strikeouts in a single season since the team moved to Minnesota in 1961.
Pablo López was the last Twin to join that club, finishing with 234 strikeouts. Walter Johnson, with seven such seasons, and Bert Blyleven, with six, are still the franchise leaders in the category. López also sits atop the group of eight pitchers with 10.8 K/9 through the first 31 starts of a season, and Bradley’s 10.3 mark trails only that pace after tying Johan Santana.
At 25 and in just his fourth season, Bradley has put himself in striking distance of repeating the feat. Santana is the last Twins pitcher to post 200-plus strikeouts in four straight seasons, doing it from 2004 through 2007. In that 2004 season, Santana set the franchise record with 240 strikeouts through the first 31 starts of a single season.
Bradley has long had the strikeout stuff, but this year it has finally come with the kind of complete package Minnesota was hoping for. Through his first three seasons - including part of the second half of 2025 - he went 19-27 with a 4.86 ERA, a 4.38 FIP and 4.0 fWAR.
This season, he’s 12-6 with a 3.73 ERA in 31 starts, and nearly half of those outings - 48.4% - have been quality starts. His 3.97 xERA and 3.80 xFIP are both career bests, as is his 2.8 fWAR, which accounts for 40.6% of his 6.9 fWAR in MLB.
The biggest weapon has been the fastball. Bradley has kept the velocity up all season, and in September he averaged 97.7 mph across 177 pitches, his highest monthly average of the year. Hitters have had little success against it, batting .182 with no extra-base hits in 41 plate appearances, and his overall whiff rate against it has been the highest of the campaign at 24.4%.
He leans on the four-seamer nearly half the time, at 46.7%, and about 38% of the time in two-strike counts against both lefties and righties. Most of his strikeouts have come with that pitch - 66 in all - while the cutter has produced 61 and the split-finger 41.
The rest of the arsenal has been just as nasty. Each of his secondary pitches has generated a whiff rate above 36%, and his curveball-plus-split-finger combination has produced the fourth-highest strikeout rate in the Majors this year at 39.2%, behind only Zack Wheeler’s 43.7% for the Phillies.
Bradley finished the season with 31 starts and was looking for his 17th game with more strikeouts than innings pitched. He also logged five games with 10 or more strikeouts and two with 11.
And even in the starts where the strikeout total didn’t outrun the innings total, he kept Minnesota in the game. In seven of those nine outings, he still worked at least five innings.
That’s the real story here: even when the swings didn’t miss as often as usual, Bradley still gave the Twins length, consistency and a chance to win. Minnesota went 18-13 in his 31 starts, a strong sign that the team may have found exactly the kind of arm it was betting on.
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