\n\tIt’s not often that a team can say it got the better of the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays\u00a0in a trade. Around baseball, that front office has built a reputation for being a step ahead; squeezing value out of every move; and rarely, if ever, coming out on the losing end of a deal. Yet, the\u00a0Minnesota Twins\u00a0may have done it not once, but twice in a span of four years.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBack at the 2021 trade deadline, the Twins were staring down a lost season and made the decision to move on from franchise icon\u00a0Nelson Cruz<\/a>. In return, they acquired a relatively under-the-radar pitching prospect in\u00a0Joe Ryan<\/a>. At the time, Ryan was intriguing, but far from a sure thing\u2014more of a fringe top-100 prospect than a headline return. What followed could not have gone better for Minnesota. Cruz struggled to make a significant impact in Tampa Bay, while Ryan quickly blossomed into an anchor of the Twins’ rotation. Now in his fifth full season, Ryan has posted a 3.80 ERA, a 110 ERA+, earned an All-Star appearance, and taken the ball as Opening Day starter twice, all while providing surplus value on a team-friendly salary that has helped the Twins build out the rest of their roster.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThat deal alone would be enough to raise eyebrows. Putting one over on the Rays is rare. Doing it in convincing fashion is even rarer. The assumption across the league is that if Tampa Bay is calling, you should proceed with caution. More often than not, they’re the ones spotting something others have missed. So when the two clubs linked up again at the 2025 trade deadline, it was fair to wonder if lightning could really strike twice.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThis time, the Twins sent high-octane reliever Griffin Jax<\/a>\u00a0to Tampa Bay in exchange for former top prospect\u00a0Taj Bradley<\/a>. Unlike the Cruz deal, this one surrendered long-term value. Jax was not a rental. He still had two and a half years of team control remaining and had been one of the most dominant relievers in the American League. Bradley, meanwhile, was no longer a prospect, but not yet a finished product, either. Across parts of three seasons with the Rays, he had flashed electric stuff, but struggled to put it all together, posting a 4.70 ERA over more than 350 innings.\n<\/p>\n \n\tStill, the Twins saw something. Bradley was only 24 years old, armed with elite velocity and bat-missing ability. On a team headed nowhere in 2025, the value of a high-leverage reliever like Jax was diminished. Turning that into a controllable starting pitcher with upside fitted into the bigger picture.\n<\/p>\n \n\tEarly on, it looks like that bet is paying off in a big way. Bradley showed flashes late last season after arriving in Minnesota, but the real buzz began during spring training. Reports out of camp suggested that something had clicked. Bradley even withdrew from pitching for Team Mexico in the World Baseball Classic to stay with the Twins and continue his buildup for the season. That decision is already looking like a wise one.\n<\/p>\n \n\tThrough his first three starts of 2026, Bradley has been dominant. He’s allowed just two runs over 16 2\/3 innings while striking out 22 hitters. His latest outing came at Target Field against two-time defending American League Cy Young<\/a> Award winner\u00a0Tarik Skubal<\/a>, and Bradley more than held his own. He worked 6 1\/3 innings, allowed just one run, and struck out 10, consistently overpowering hitters and generating nine swings and misses. He’s already touched 100 MPH multiple times and now owns the fastest pitch recorded by a Twins starting pitcher in the pitch-tracking era.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tThere’s a different look to Bradley now. The raw stuff was always there, but the Twins appear to have helped him refine it, harness it, and elevate it. At 24 years old, there is still room for growth, which makes the early results even more exciting.\n<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other side of the deal, the early returns have been rough for Jax. In his first four appearances of 2026, he’s allowed five earned runs and carries an 11.25 ERA, along with a -0.97 Win Probability Added mark that ranks third-worst in the league. It’s a very small sample, and Jax has a track record that suggests he will settle in, but the contrast in early performance only adds fuel to the narrative.\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \n\tNone of this is to say the book is written on this trade. Baseball has a way of humbling early conclusions, and both players will have plenty of time to shape how this deal is ultimately viewed. But in the early going, the Twins look like they may have identified and unlocked something the Rays were willing to move on from.\n<\/p>\n \n\tFor an organization like Tampa Bay, that almost never happens. And if Bradley continues on this trajectory, the Twins may once again be able to say they got the better of one of the smartest teams in baseball.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhat do you think? Have the Twins pulled off another fleece, or is it too early to make that call?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s not often that a team can say it got the better of the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays\u00a0in a trade.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,6439,1455,822,60,3190,4,320,763,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-670183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-griffin-jax","10":"tag-joe-ryan","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-minnesota-twins","13":"tag-minnesotatwins","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-nelson-cruz","16":"tag-taj-bradley","17":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116369033030317598","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}