Taj Bradley, pitching with swagger again, strikes out 10 as Twins top Guardians

Bobby Nightengale, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Jul 7, 2026

Published in Baseball

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

MINNEAPOLIS — About a month ago, Twins manager Derek Shelton called Taj Bradley into his office and told him that he thought he got “swagger jacked.”

It was a phrase that Shelton picked up from Carl Crawford when he was Crawford’s hitting coach in Tampa Bay. Bradley struggled in his first few starts following a stint on the injured list, and Shelton didn’t see him having as much fun on the mound.

“The thing I love about watching Taj pitch is it’s like watching a 12-year-old pitch,” Shelton said. “I mean that in a beautiful way. The way he jumps off a mound. His energy. That’s awesome.”

With the way Bradley pitched in a 3-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday, safe to say the swagger is back. Bradley struck out 10 batters across seven innings, yielding three hits and one run in the series opener at Target Field.

Twins reliever Andrew Morris pitched a clean eighth inning and Taylor Rogers recorded two outs in the ninth before Yoendrys Gómez secured the save.

Want signs of swagger?

Bradley punched his hand into his glove and ran off the mound when he froze Khalil Watson with a 99.6-mph fastball for a called third strike to end the sixth inning.

When Bradley stranded a runner at third in the seventh inning, he clapped onto the back of his glove a couple times, slapped hands with infielders who ran past him and looked at fans in the announced crowd of 17,813 who gave him a standing ovation.

Bradley pounded the strike zone, finishing just his second start of the season with zero walks. Even more impressive, his cutter was virtually unhittable. Guardians hitters took 24 swings at his cutter, and they missed 17 times.

Rhys Hoskins hit a solo homer in the second inning, depositing a fastball over the 411-foot marker on the center-field wall.

From there, it was all Bradley. He retired 17 of his last 19 batters.

The Twins haven’t played well historically against Cleveland, owning a 21-40 record against their division rival since 2022. The Twins haven’t won a home series versus the Guardians since May 13-15, 2022, a skid that has spanned eight series.

Playing without All-Star center fielder Byron Buxton, who landed on the 10-day injured list Tuesday, the Twins took advantage of an uncharacteristic game from the Guardians defense.

The Twins loaded the bases in the second inning without a ball leaving the infield.

Kody Clemens reached on a fielding error from second baseman Travis Bazzana, then beat a slow flip to second base when Ryan Kreidler hit a grounder to the shortstop. Then Luke Keaschall reached on an infield single to first base, when Keaschall beat Guardians lefty starter Joey Cantillo in a race to the bag.

Austin Martin hit a tying sacrifice fly, scoring Clemens, and Brooks Lee followed with a two-out RBI single on a ground ball through the middle of the infield.

Cantillo, who was charged with two unearned runs in five innings, stranded seven runners across the first three innings.

The Twins added to their lead in the seventh inning when Josh Bell hit a leadoff single off Guardians reliever Erik Sabrowski, and Clemens was awarded an RBI triple on a fly ball that deflected off the glove of four-time Gold Glove winner Steven Kwan in the left-center gap.

That was enough support for Bradley, who pitched around a one-out single from Chase DeLauter in the fourth inning and a leadoff double from DeLauter in the seventh inning, the latter a ground ball that deflected off a diving Clemens’ glove.

After DeLauter advanced to third with one out in the seventh inning, the potential tying run, Bradley escaped by striking out Hoskins with a cutter, and he induced an inning-ending groundout against Brayan Rocchio.

It was Bradley’s ninth career start with a double-digit strikeout total, and now he’s done it in back-to-back outings. Across his last four starts, he owns a 2.25 ERA with 32 strikeouts in 24 innings.