Minneapolis – Taj Bradley has been electric over his last three starts.
Tuesday night emphasized that this recent stretch was not a fluke. He threw seven innings of one-run ball and struck out 10 Cleveland Guardians in the Twins’ 3-1 win over them.
“He’s lights out,” said Minnesota Twins DH Josh Bell. “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.”
The most impressive thing Taj Bradley did Tuesday night was generating 25 swings and misses on his pitches. He leaned on his cutter, which the Guardians whiffed on 17 times in the game. Bradley says there’s no big secret behind generating so many swings and misses; it’s all based on executing pitches within the strike zone.
“I feel like that’s my strongest capability,” Bradley said following his start Tuesday night. “So if I can get that going, get early contact or induce a lot of swing and miss, pitching to parts of the zone that are tunneling well off of other pitches and get the chase.”
“We talked a couple starts ago about getting his swagger back, and it’s definitely back,” said Twins manager Derek Shelton. “And I mean that in a positive way, not in a cocky way. He feels confident on the mound, he feels like he has the ability to execute pitches.”
The resurgence in Bradley’s performance comes at a good time, after he struggled coming off the IL on May 23. In six starts between May 23 and June 20, Bradley had a 6.07 ERA, a 1.52 WHIP, .256 opponents average, and walked 11.4% of batters. Still, he struck out 24.2% of hitters.
It was a striking difference from who he was before his injury, as he was becoming a solid No. 2 starter behind Joe Ryan in the first month plus of the season. Then, Bradley had a 2.87 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, .217 opponents’ average, 8.5% walk rate, and 26.1% strikeout rate over his first eight starts of the season.
Now that things have clicked into place for Bradley, he’s feeling the swagger that had been missing for quite some time.
“If I can look back at the scoreboard and see I’m ahead in the count or even at 2-2, knowing that I still have more stuff to live off of and more stuff that I can compete in the zone and go strike to ball, it keeps me in a dominant state of mind,” he said. “I can keep riding off of that.”
Bradley’s teammates have taken notice of the work he’s put in to get back to this point from earlier in the year.
“Nobody works harder,” said Bell. “When you look at him in the weight room, it’s like every day it seems like it’s his start day. Getting after it, doing the same routine, it’s like two hours more. Nobody wants it more, so it’s nice seeing the hard work pay off.”
Bradley has now struck out 50% of batters in his last two outings, totaling 21 against 42 batters from the Houston Astros and Cleveland. Most of his success is related to how he’s been using his cutter in two-strike counts. Seven of his 10 strikeouts on Tuesday night came via the cutter, and he also got four of the 11 he racked up against Houston on it.
Since Bradley can deliver a ton of heat with his fastball, the off-speed ability provided by the cutter has thrown hitters off when he gets to two-strike counts.
“I think it’s the ability, with the fastball at 97 to 98, and then the cutter is at 92 to 94, that you have to honor the fastball and the cutter is so hard,” said Shelton. “It makes it challenging to stay [on the cutter]. You get caught in between really quickly.”
“I’m just throwing strikes with it,” said Bradley. “That’s all I’m doing. 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. 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.”
Now that Taj Bradley is back where he was before the injury, he’s capable of anything with the swagger he’s carrying on and off the mound. His latest win brought the Twins within two games of a .500 record, and Bradley is set to pitch again Sunday against the Los Angeles Angels. There’s a good chance his stretch of dominance, headlined by his cutter, could bring the Twins a winning record going into the All-Star Break.
