How Taj Bradley Can Improve His Pitch Arsenal in 2024
(11/21/23) With some adjustment to his pitch arsenal, Taj Bradley can reach his potential as a top-of-the-rotation arm in 2024.
Originally published on Medium on November 21, 2023.
Since making his Major League debut last season for the Tampa Bay Rays, Taj Bradley has been one of the most promising young starting pitchers in all of Major League Baseball. With plenty of question marks surrounding the Tampa Bay Rays rotation, such as the injuries to Shane McClanahan and Drew Rassmussen as well as the potential trade of Tyler Glasnow, this offseason presents an opportunity for Taj Bradley to further refine his pitch arsenal, in preparation of a larger role in Tampa Bay’s starting rotation next season. With a four-pitch mix headlined by an impressive Four Seamer, Bradley has the potential to “take the next step” and reach his potential as a top-of-the-rotation pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2024.
Overview:
Taj Bradley’s pitch arsenal currently consists of four pitches: a Four Seamer, a Cutter, a Curveball, and a Changeup. Run Values indicate that Bradley’s Curveball was his most productive pitch last season, while FanGraphs’s Stuff+ model believes that Bradley’s Four Seamer is the best pitch in his arsenal.
In my opinion, Taj Bradley’s Four Seamer is not only the best pitch in his arsenal, but is also one of the best Four Seamers in all of Major League Baseball amongst starting pitchers, as evident by the 131 Stuff+ the pitch generates. As shown by the movement plot above, Bradley’s Four Seamer possesses an incredible amount of induced vertical break (averaging 18.9 inches), giving the pitch the “lift” that allows for it to be effective at the top of the zone and generate Whiffs. Averaging 96.1 MPH, the pitch also displays plus velocity, further improving its effectiveness. This elite Fastball shape provides a great foundation for the rest of Taj Bradley’s pitch arsenal to be built around, and the results on the pitch should improve once Bradley develops a more productive secondary pitch in his arsenal.
Film Room:
2023 Splits:
In 23 games (21 starts) last season for Tampa Bay, Taj Bradley produced a 5.59 ERA and 19.6% K-BB over 104.2 innings pitched. Despite having a high ERA, Bradley’s 3.82 SIERA and 3.83 xFIP indicate that he got a bit “unlucky” in his rookie season, and should regress to around a 4.00 ERA next season, assuming no changes are made to his pitch arsenal. In addition, Bradley appeared to have some “bad luck” regarding home runs allowed, as his 19.2% HR/FB ratio is above the expected range of outcomes for pitchers. However, due to Bradley locating his Fastball up in the zone (thereby resulting in more fly balls allowed), it is safe to assume that he will live around the upper bounds of this range (~12%) for the remainder of his career.
An interesting development that occurred in his rookie season was that Taj Bradley fared better against left-handed hitters, producing a 32.6% Strikeout Rate and 8.7% Walk Rate (23.9% K-BB), while producing a 23.5% Strikeout Rate and 8.3% Walk Rate (15.2% K-BB) against right-handed hitters. This can primarily be attributed to the fact that Bradley changes his pitch mix depending on whether the opposing hitter is right-handed or left-handed. Against right-handed hitters, Bradley is predominantly a Fastball-Cutter-Curveball pitcher while Bradley increases his Changeup usage significantly to left-handed pitchers. These usage splits make sense, as the Changeup has been successful at generating both Whiffs and weak contact against left-handed hitters, with opposing batters producing a 45.3% Whiff Rate and .278 xwOBAcon against the offering. Bradley also locates the pitch extremely well, utilizing the pitch down-and-away to left-handed hitters which is effective at generating swing-and-misses, especially after utilizing the Four Seamer up in the zone.
While Bradley has been effective at deploying his Changeup as a secondary weapon against left-handed hitters, he currently lacks an effective offering to generate swing-and-misses from right-handed hitters. Bradley’s best secondary pitch to right-handed hitters is his Cutter, which generated a 28.9 Whiff Rate and .449 xwOBAcon on 33.9% usage to right-handed hitters last season. While classified as a Cutter, the pitch’s shape reminds me of a gyro Slider with plus velocity (averaging 88.9 MPH), and Bradley has been utilizing the pitch similar to a Slider as an offering to create swing-and-miss. In order to generate more swing-and-miss (which will in turn produce more strikeouts) from right-handed hitters, I believe that Bradley needs to add to his repertoire another pitch with glove-side movement, therefore I recommend that he adds a Sweeper to his pitch arsenal for the 2024 season.
Recommendation — Add a Sweeper:
As has been well documented over the past season, the discovery and continued understanding of seam-shifted wake has resulted in the proliferation of Sweeper usage among pitchers across Major League Baseball. Generating more horizontal movement than the typical Slider, the Sweeper generates just as much swing-and-miss as traditional Sliders, but induces a lower quality of contact (as measured by wOBA, ISO, and BABIP).
*For further reading regarding the increased use of Sweepers in 2023, check out the article I wrote about the rise of the Sweeper and potential revitalization of the Splitter:
Pitchers displaying supination bias are ideal candidates for adding a Sweeper to their pitch arsenal, and I believe that given the spin characteristics of his Fastball, Taj Bradley is an effective candidate to add a Sweeper to his pitch arsenal. Given Bradley’s difficulties generating swing-and-miss and inducing weak contact against right-handed hitters, these weaknesses project to be mitigated if Bradley is able to effectively add at least an average Sweeper to his arsenal.
The addition of the Sweeper to Taj Bradley’s pitch arsenal also projects to improve his pitch sequencing moving forward. Private data from Major League organizations indicate that the two most effective pitch pairing for generating swing-and-miss against opposing hitters are Sweeper-Slider and Slider-Sweeper. This appears to be an attribute valued by the Tampa Bay Rays, as many pitchers within their starting rotation possess either this combination or a prominent Cutter-Slider combination (Zach Eflin, Drew Rasmussen, Jeffrey Springs, Aaron Civale). With this combination in his pitch arsenal, not only will Bradley have increased swing-and-miss with the new Sweeper, but he will likely experience better results with his Cutter as well due to pitch sequencing. Lance Brozdowski of Marquee Sports did an excellent breakdown into pitch sequencing, and the video can be viewed below:
One counter-argument to the suggestion that Taj Bradley should add a Sweeper is that he is not a good candidate to add this pitch to his arsenal due to his over-the-top delivery. While I cannot argue the fact that Bradley does indeed have an over-the-top delivery, I do not believe that this prevents Taj Bradley from developing a Sweeper, as his pitch arsenal is reminiscent of another player who added a Sweeper to their repertoire last season.
As shown by the movement plots above, Taj Bradley’s pitch arsenal is very similar to that of Nick Pivetta. Both pitchers have Four Seamers with excellent vertical movement and similar Cutters and Sliders, with the main difference being that Bradley’s average velocity on all of his pitches are a couple MPH higher than Pivetta’s average velocity. Similar to Bradley, Pivetta has an over-the-top delivery which, rather than preventing him from throwing a Sweeper, allows him to throw the pitch at a unique arm angle which creates deception and improves the performance of the offering.
Adding a Sweeper to his pitch arsenal helped Nick Pivetta increase his Strikeout Rate from 22.6% in 2022 to 31.2% in 2023, and it can be expected that Bradley could experience a similar increase if he is able to effectively add this pitch to his arsenal. The addition of a Sweeper to Taj Bradley’s repertoire will generate more swing-and-misses against right-handed hitters which when combined with his stellar performance against left-handed hitters last season, may turn Taj Bradley into one of the best starting pitchers in all of Major League Baseball in 2024.
Concluding Thoughts:
With the addition of a Sweeper to his existing pitch mix, Taj Bradley has the potential to “take the next step” and move atop the Tampa Bay Rays starting rotation in 2024. By adding a Sweeper to his arsenal, Bradley will be able to improve his effectiveness against right-handed hitters, raising his overall level of production as a starting pitcher. The addition of Sweeper will also improve the results of all the other pitches in Bradley’s arsenal, as the Cutter will improve via pitch tunneling and hitters will be less apt to sit on the Fastball, allowing the Four Seamer to produce the results its elite shape indicates it should. Taj Bradley has the potential to become one of the best starting pitchers in all of Major League Baseball, and the further development of his pitch arsenal will be one development I will definitely be keeping a close eye on heading into the 2024 season.
Follow @MLBDailyStats_ on X (Twitter) and Adam Salorio on Substack for more in-depth MLB analysis. Statistics provided by FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, Thomas Nestico’s Patreon, and Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard.
Photo credits to Getty Images and USA Today.