![\"Taj](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STP-Z-TAJ-0409-02.jpg\")
Taj Bradley #26 of the Minnesota Twins (C) celebrates with teammates in the seventh inning at Target Field on April 07, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the Tigers 4-2. (Photo by David Berding\/Getty Images)<\/p>\nWhen Taj Bradley arrived in St. Paul last summer, the starting pitcher had recently been demoted to Triple-A by the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays wanted him to work on his splitter. They wanted him to become more consistent. It wasn\u2019t about his raw stuff \u2014 it was about being able to put it all together.<\/p>\n
Taj Bradley #26 of the Minnesota Twins (C) celebrates with teammates in the seventh inning at Target Field on April 07, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Twins defeated the Tigers 4-2. (Photo by David Berding\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to forget, as he begins his fourth season in the majors, that Bradley is just 25 years old. He\u2019s still young, just months older than rotation mate Mick Abel, who has thrown about 350 fewer innings than Bradley.<\/p>\n
And so as Bradley, in the very early going of the season, has been the Twins\u2019 biggest bright spot, it\u2019s not uncommon to hear words like \u201cgrowth,\u201d and \u201cmaturity,\u201d thrown around when coaches and teammates are talking about Bradley, who has a 1.08 earned-run average through his first three starts.<\/p>\n
He uses those words when he\u2019s talking about himself, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the physique. I\u2019m swole now,\u201d he joked about his growth. \u201cI think mentally I\u2019ve grown and matured into a better picture than what I was last year, and I want to keep evolving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to forgo competing in last month\u2019s World Baseball Classic for Team Mexico was, he said, the most mature decision he has made. He wanted to compete, but knowing that he had an important season coming up, he decided it was for the best to stay back at spring training and continue working with Twins staff and teammates.<\/p>\n
The maturity has shown up on the field, too.<\/p>\n
In the past, Bradley noted that one inning would blow up and take him out of the game. But he has done a good job this season not letting situations spiral.<\/p>\n
That showed in the first inning of his first start when the Baltimore Orioles loaded the bases with two outs against him before he blew strike three past Dylan Beavers. And again on Tuesday night against Detroit when he recovered from a rocky second inning and ended up throwing 6 1\/3 innings of one-run ball, outdueling reigning two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal.<\/p>\n
\u201c(I\u2019m) just getting out of my own way,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cI think I was hard-headed in sticking to what I thought was best for me. Kind of being scared of change, thinking it\u2019s going to take me out of the progression I want to go. But I feel like I was hindering myself. So just being open to change, open to try new things, different mentalities, different coaching philosophies, stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been evident to those around him.<\/p>\n
There was no doubt, catcher Ryan Jeffers said, \u201cthat he was an ace-caliber pitcher,\u201d when the Twins acquired him from the Rays for reliever Griffin Jax last summer. But now he has gotten more comfortable with the information that the Twins are giving him and how to utilize it, and it seems to be paying dividends.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy him buying into the stuff that goes on before his start, the game planning and the off-the-mound stuff, by him buying into that more, I think it gives him more of a comfortable feeling to trust me and then go out there and just be the version of Taj,\u201d Jeffers said.<\/p>\n
That version has touched 100 miles per hour this season, has been working very effectively with the splitter that he worked hard through the winter on and has gotten promising early results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing him continuing to mature right in front of our eyes,\u201d manager Derek Shelton said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Taj Bradley arrived in St. Paul last summer, the starting pitcher had recently been demoted to Triple-A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,19,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-671166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-twins","12":"tag-minnesotatwins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116371694521838221","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671166","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=671166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}