Taj Bradley set for rehab start with Triple-A St. Paul Sunday
Bradley’s St. Paul rehab start was Minnesota’s first rotation checkpoint. If the velocity and command held, the Twins could bring him back fast.
Taj Bradley’s rehab outing with Triple-A St. Paul was not just a stop on the way back from the injured list. It was Minnesota’s first hard read on whether one of its best starters could rejoin the Twins quickly enough to matter in the next turn of the rotation.
Bradley was placed on the 15-day injured list on May 9, retroactive to May 6, with right pectoralis muscle inflammation, then cleared for the assignment after a positive 20-pitch bullpen session. The immediate benchmarks Sunday were straightforward and unforgiving: hold his pitch count, keep the fastball velocity intact, and show that the command that powered his early-season run had not slipped. If that all checked out, the path back to Minneapolis could move fast, with the next start potentially coming for the Twins.
The caution around the rehab start was real because Bradley has dealt with the same area before. He missed the start of the 2024 season with a right pec strain while with the Tampa Bay Rays, a setback that cost him about two months. That history made Sunday about more than one box score line. It was about how his body responded, whether his delivery stayed crisp, and whether Minnesota could trust him to move from rehab work back into a big-league workload without another pause.
The stakes were high because Bradley had been one of the club’s most effective starters before the injury. Through eight starts, the 25-year-old right-hander owned a 2.87 ERA with 52 strikeouts in 47 innings, and he had worked at least six innings in six of his last seven outings. His most recent start before landing on the injured list came May 5 against Washington, when he threw six innings and struck out eight in another strong showing.
That production is why the Twins’ July 31, 2025 trade for Bradley, sent to Minnesota from Tampa Bay for reliever Griffin Jax, looks much different now than it did when it was made. Bradley, a fifth-round pick by the Rays in 2018 out of Redan High School in Stone Mountain, Georgia, has given Minnesota front-line innings in a season when every healthy starter carries extra weight. A clean rehab start in St. Paul would not just clear a pitcher for return, it would sharpen the Twins’ decision tree at a moment when they need answers quickly.
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