This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

As far back as Brent Headrick can remember, everyone around him has been deeply involved in competitive drag racing -- parents, aunts, uncles, family friends, older sister, you name it. Their hometown track was about 45 minutes from where Headrick grew up on the outskirts of Chicago -- and though he didn’t get behind the wheel much because of baseball, he remembers the rush.

“It’s a quarter-mile track,” Headrick said. “Car takes nine seconds to get a quarter-mile, and it goes 138 [mph] at a quarter-mile. You’re hauling.”

So, Headrick is accustomed to seeing crazy velocity readings, which is typically a fantastic thing to say about a young pitcher -- except, for most of his life, that didn’t really describe his work from the mound.

When the Twins selected the left-hander from Illinois State in the ninth round of the 2019 MLB Draft, he was throwing anywhere from 88 to 90 mph, maybe 92 on a good day, he said. That made it all the more astounding when he showed up to his first live batting practice session of ‘22 and unloaded -- and saw the radar gun read 96 mph.

“I'm like, ‘That can't be real. That's got to be fake,’” Headrick said. “And then I came up the next outing. I was like, two to four [92-94 mph] and I touched a five and one more six. I'm like, ‘Okay, I guess this is the new me.’”

That’s why Headrick, absent from top prospect lists for the majority of his Minor League career, was added to the Twins’ 40-man roster last offseason and promoted to Triple-A St. Paul to begin the regular season -- and now stands one step away from the Major Leagues for a team that very aggressively uses its pitchers on the 40-man roster.

That was the product of three months’ concerted offseason work to overhaul his mechanics and shorten up his arm path, taking advantage of a recovery from an oblique injury to start fresh. And as he locked in on the development of that new arm path and completely changed his strengthening and lifting program, he also found a strange -- but encouraging -- side-effect: His arm was recovering better than ever.

“I just kept feeling better,” Headrick said. “I'm like, ‘This is weird. I'm feeling really good.’ … It allowed me to continue to throw hard multiple times a week, because I was recovering really fast because the mechanics were good.”

And what good would a full transformation be if it didn’t encompass his full skillset? Last Spring Training, the Twins equipped Headrick with a new splitter, and following his midseason promotion to Double-A Wichita, he finally found a kindred spirit who could help fix his slider. That was Minor League pitching coach Cibney Bello, who shared a key distinction with Headrick: They both have enormous hands.

“I have giant hands,” Headrick said. “I've never met anybody with bigger hands than me. So it's tough to learn pitches from guys that have, you know, normal hands.”

The focus since then has been to consistently land all three pitches -- fastball, slider, splitter -- for strikes. And entering this spring, Headrick was finally in a place where he felt comfortable with a true three-pitch mix. He placed second among Twins Minor Leaguers in strikeouts (136) last season, behind only Louie Varland -- and is more encouraged than ever coming off his first big league camp.

“It gives you the confidence playing with them that you know you belong there and things like that,” Headrick said. “I think it's really good to be around those guys and to get that experience before you get there.”

“I’ve known Brent since his ISU days, and his attitude and baseball aptitude, including his swing-miss percentage and torsion recoil inducement, will make him a fan favorite,” said Burton Rocks, his agent.