MINNEAPOLIS – The Taj Bradley of April is back. In fact, the Taj Bradley of July might be even better than the one that had the Twins so excited in the season’s first month.
Bradley turned in one of his best starts of the season – truly, one of the best of his career – on Tuesday as Minnesota opened a critical three-game series against the Guardians with a 3-1 win. The right-hander struck out 10, reaching double digits for the second straight game, and didn’t issue a walk.
Bradley had his usual high-octane fastball rolling even better than usual, his splitter diving and a cutter the likes of which few pitchers in baseball have thrown in recent years. He finished off seven of his 10 strikeouts with the cutter, six of those on swings.
“I feel like if they’re looking for fastball and I can strike my offspeeds, I feel like I can have a good day, a successful day,” Bradley said. “That’s my mindset going in, to be a strike-throwing machine. And when I get to two strikes and there’s blood in the water, just kill them.”
Bradley totaled 25 swings and misses, tied for the fourth-highest total in a game in the Majors this year. That’s the most by a Twins pitcher in more than a year, since Joe Ryan on April 27, 2025. He induced 17 whiffs on 24 swings against the cutter, the most by any pitcher on a cutter since Houston’s Luis Garcia on April 19, 2023.
It was the second consecutive game with brilliant stuff from Bradley. He struck out 11 in five innings against the Astros last week, and he has a 1.89 ERA over his last three starts after a brief slump in the first half of June. It’s reminiscent of when he posted a 1.63 ERA over his first five starts of the year.
Bradley flashed a somewhat different pitch mix from usual, throwing only one curveball, more cutters and splits, and fewer four-seamers than he does on average.
“He was phenomenal,” said Guardians manager Steven Vogt. “We were not able to lay off anything down as a whole, and it showed. … When a guy's throwing 98 and they're good, that's what happens.”
It was Bradley’s third career start with 10 or more strikeouts and no walks, two of which have come this season (the first coming on April 7).
The Guardians managed just three hits against Bradley, and they hit six balls out of the infield against him in seven innings. He did a successful job of “tunneling” his three primary offerings, making it difficult for hitters to detect what was coming: the fastball that topped 99 mph on multiple occasions, the splitter that goes from strike to ball or the low-90s cutter.
“If I can look back at the scoreboard and see I’m ahead in the count or even at 2-2,” Bradley said, “knowing that I still have more stuff to live off of and more stuff that I can compete [with] in the zone and go strike to ball, it keeps me in a dominant state of mind. I can keep riding off of that.”
The only blemish against Bradley came in the form of a Rhys Hoskins solo homer in the second. He worked around a one-out single in the fourth, then dodged a leadoff double in the seventh to protect Minnesota’s slim lead. That escape was arguably the moment of the game.
“That’s a big out right there,” said manager Derek Shelton. “That’s when you’re going, ‘All right, I’m going to give you my best stuff, and we don’t need contact.’ And he got that. It was really exciting to see.”
Bradley averaged 97.6 mph on his four-seam fastball (his season average is 96.9) and got those 25 whiffs on 56 Cleveland swings (45 percent). Even as the Twins had trouble converting early offensive opportunities, it never really felt like they were in trouble. Bradley was in control.
"Yeah, he's lights out,” said Twins designated hitter Josh Bell. “You know, piggybacking off of what he did in Houston – upper-90s fastball, splitter, cutter like 92, 94 – it's tough at-bats. Stacking up strikeouts, just doing what he does."