If I told you the Twins just acquired a pitcher who compares to Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hunter Brown, and Dylan Cease, would you believe me? Well, Baseball Savant does, at least as it pertains to pitch velocity and movement.
After acquiring righty Taj Bradley from the Tampa Bay Rays for bullpen ace Griffin Jax, Derek Falvey called Bradley “One of the best young starting pitchers in the game”. That may be a bit overblown at this point, but the building blocks are there. If you squint just a little bit, you can see your way to the same conclusion; it just may take a little work to get him there.
The Rays drafted Bradley in the fifth round of the 2018 draft. He advanced quickly, and was considered a top pitching prospect, reaching the 20 spot on the MLB top-100 list heading into the 2023 season. He made his debut in April of that year, and has shown signs of brilliance, but also frustrating inconsistency.
In his rookie season, he struck out 28% of opposing hitters, but walked a too-high 8.5%. Since then, both of these have gotten worse. In any given start, he may either look dominant or get knocked around; there hasn’t been a ton of middle ground. To wit, this season he has given up four or more runs eight times, and two or fewer runs nine times. Now, a former top prospect not being able to put it all together consistently is the recipe for being labeled a bust, and that’s always a possible outcome.
There are a few reasons for optimism, however, and if he can take even a small step forward, he has frontline starter potential. Before you tell me “c’mon, there’s no way Tampa Bay would give up a guy capable of being a frontline starter” let me remind you they did this very thing with Joe Ryan. Anyway, let’s dig in.
Stuff
As I mentioned in my opener, Bradley’s stuff is legit. His fastball averages 96, but he doesn’t miss many bats with it. He’s got a hard splitter he throws to lefties, and a cutter he throws to righties. He’s also got a curve that gets a ton of whiffs due to elite induced vertical break. Both the cutter and curve grade out as above-average pitches.
He’s a ground ball pitcher and limits hard contact, but when he does allow hard contact, it leaves the yard a little too frequently.
His splitter grades out well, but he has been using it less recently. Early in the season, he was throwing it 20% of the time, but in July, that has dipped to less than 7%. That factored into his demotion to the Rays’ Triple-A affiliate in Durham. Bradley spoke to this, saying “I know I need that third … to get back to where it was last year. I’ll just take it as it is and go down there, get back to work, just keep going.” To his credit, in his first start with Durham, he seemed to get back on track, with a 7.0 IP, O H, O R, 2 BB, 3 SO line.
To me, this suggests some tinkering with his pitch mix or sequencing could increase his whiff and strikeout rate. Or, encouraging him to throw his heater even higher in the zone (and helping him locate consistently) could improve results with that pitch.
He has also been incredibly durable, with no professional history of arm or shoulder issues.
Home-road splits, and expected numbers
There are a couple pieces to note here. The first is the stark nature of his home/road splits. Across ten away games this season, Bradley has a 3.66 FIP, in large part due to his limiting home runs on the road. Additionally, in each of his first two seasons in the league, he gave up three more home runs than expected. In 2025, he’s on pace to do about the same. For his young career, his xFIP is 3.88 — almost a full run better than his actual ERA. That suggests he should be a third or fourth starter already at 24 years old, and there’s still plenty of projectability there. Making 16 starts at Target Field instead of George Steinbrenner Field might be just what the doctor ordered.
Twins Pitching Development
The Twins pitching machine excels at adding velocity, and optimizing the tools pitchers have. (See: Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Pablo Lopez, Zebby Matthews). Bradley already throws heat — what could he do with an extra tick or two on his pitches? Or perhaps they incorporate a sweeper to give hitters yet another look. He will need to work on command and control a bit, but that’s not at all uncommon for a 24-year-old pitcher.
Sure, I realize that every pitcher has the potential to be great if they strike out more batters and walk fewer, but not every pitcher has Bradley’s stuff. It does seem likely that even if the Twins can’t unlock his true potential, his downside will probably be a high-leverage bullpen arm. You know, like the pitcher with great stuff but inconsistent results, whom the Twins traded to get him. Only, Bradley is much younger, much cheaper, and under control for longer.
Look, I get fans being disappointed that Falvey chose to blow up the bullpen, and I understand feeling like the return for Jax is a bit underwhelming. But, reading through Rays Twitter, many of their fans feel like the Rays gave up too much for Jax. Time will tell, of course, but it’s only reasonable to trust the Twins’ ability to recognize pitchers they can do more with, even if they might be destined for the bullpen. And honestly? That seems like the absolute worst-case scenario for Bradley.