The Minnesota Twins are off to an unfortunate 1-3 start to the 2026 season, but there have been a few positive takeaways throughout the first four games. Royce Lewis already has a pair of homers, and Joe Ryan looked to have maybe the best velocity of his career. Another specific positive takeaway is how good Taj Bradley looked in his first start, which came in the Twins' lone win of the season in Game 2 of their series in Baltimore.
Twins' Taj Bradley looks ready to take the leap in 2026
The main thing that stuck out in Bradley’s start was the incredible velocity that he showcased. His fastball averaged 97.4 mph on the day, which was up over a full mile per hour from last season, when it averaged 96.2. He also topped out at 99.6 mph on the day, which was the fastest pitch by a Twins starting pitcher in the Statcast era. He’s actually thrown over 100 mph twice in his career previously with Tampa Bay, so it’s plausible that we’ll see him break that record several more times this season. It's also important to note that even though Bradley has 74 career big league starts under his belt, he is still a very young pitcher, as he just turned 25 years old on March 20th.
Despite Bradley's fastball having some of the best velocity in the game amongst starting pitchers, it has actually been a below-average pitch for him in his career. Last season, his four-seam fastball had a run value of minus-five, which was in the 20th percentile. He’s actually had significantly more success with his breaking stuff. His curveball was one of the best pitches in all of baseball last season, with an insanely impressive opposing batting average of .082 along with an excellent whiff rate of 37.6. Bradley’s split-finger was also an above-average pitch for him last season, just not quite as elite as his curve.
This raises the idea that if Bradley’s fastball does play significantly better for him in 2026, a breakout season could be on the horizon. It’s just a one-game sample size, but it's hard to ignore the 30 percent whiff rate he generated on his four-seamer in his first outing. To put that into perspective, the average MLB whiff rate on four-seam fastballs is usually only around ten percent. Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo had the best fastball in the game last season in terms of run value. His four-seamer generated a whiff rate of 29.7 percent on the season.
Bradley’s split-finger also looked really effective on Saturday in Baltimore. He threw it 27 times, and the Orioles did not record a hit off it. It’s his go-to pitch against left-handed hitters, as 21 of the split-fingers he threw were when facing a left-handed batter. This is a similar ratio to what he had last season. Bradley’s split-finger actually had the highest whiff rate out of all his pitches on Saturday, with a whiff rate of 63.6%. Obviously, that's a near-impossible mark to maintain over a full season, but it’s a great sign for the Twins that he was able to generate so many swings and misses on that pitch.
If Bradley was able to have a breakout season in 2026, there’s no question that it would be monumental for the Twins' rotation. Going into spring training, he was not supposed to be the team’s number two starter for the season. He was initially supposed to be competing for a back-end slot in the Twins' starting rotation, but unfortunately, after a Pablo Lopez season-ending injury and a disappointing spring camp from Bailey Ober, Bradley ended up being named the number two starter by manager Derek Shelton.
The Twins clearly have a lot of faith in Taj Bradley being a top-of-the-rotation arm for them in the long haul. They traded him straight up for prized reliever Griffin Jax during their trade deadline overhaul last season. It was reported prior to the deadline last season that the Twins' initial asking price for Jax was a minimum of two top-100 caliber prospects. The return they got for Jax obviously ended up being a lot different than that, as he already had graduated from prospect status by a decent amount as he made 67 career starts with the Rays. It would certainly be interesting to know what Minnesota’s other offers were for Jax, but the fact that their asking price for him, less than a week before the deadline, was that high shows how highly they thought of Bradley when they acquired him.
It’s still extremely early in the season, but Taj Bradley’s first start in 2026 was clearly very encouraging. The jump in velocity along with the amount of whiffs he racked up during his first start are two things that Twins fans should be excited about. For a Twins team that’s not really supposed to make much noise in 2026, the potential emergence of Taj Bradley is a reason there should still be some excitement centered around a young Twins squad this season.