Aledo native Cody Bradford’s career in Major League Baseball has been quite the rollercoaster two seasons in.
After what he referred to as, “feeling like I had a cup of coffee in the Big Leagues,” as a rookie in 2023, he was part of the first World Series championship team in Texas Rangers history.
With sights set on returning to October baseball in 2024, injuries plagued the boys in blue. Bradford himself succumbed to a freak rib injury that left him sidelined for months while the Rangers playoff hopes were dashed.
In his sophomore campaign, Bradford and the Rangers began the season on the mountain top, but ended the year in the valley.
“It started off really exciting,” Bradford said. “I broke camp for the first time with the big league team, so that was definitely a milestone. The coaches and some of the older players congratulate guys for breaking camp with the big league team for the first time.
“There were a few things the older guys did for us. One of the things was, a couple of the guys split the cost and bought all of us two suits. They had a guy fly in from New York City to the stadium to custom fit us for two suits that we each got to pick out. That was really cool, because we got to go to the White House this year, so I got to wear one of them.”
The Rangers started off the season hot. They won 2-out-of-3 against the Cubs and Rays before splitting a four-game series at home against Houston.
Bradford had one of the best outings of his young career against the Astros on Friday, April 5, at GlobeLife Field. The lanky left-hander threw 7.2 innings, striking out four without issuing a walk. The only two hits he gave up were the bookends of the outing.
Offensively, the Rangers gave Bradford all the support he needed and then some. Adolis Garcia and Marcus Semien each hit three-run homers as Texas cruised to a 10-2 win to start the series.
Then the wheels started to come off.
“Started off the year about as good as it could’ve gone,” Bradford recalled. “I didn’t really have expectations on myself. I just wanted to be on the big league team and contributing somewhere. It just happened that there was a spot [in the rotation] open with [Michael] Lorenzen still building up and [Max] Scherzer and [Jacob] DeGrom banged up.
“I got to get my feet wet early in the year with three good starts, and then had kind of a freak rib injury.”
Just six days after the best outing of his career, Bradford suffered a stress fracture to his rib that sidelined him through most of July.
“There’s not much you can do [with this type of injury] from a PT (physical therapy) side, except for sit back and wait for that bone to heal on its own. I think there was a big learning moment there, not only in baseball, but in life in general that some things are totally out of your hands,” Bradford said.
“That was a really cool opportunity for Madi and I both to just step back and be patient during that and trust God was going to work through that - that his plan was going to be better than any way we would be able to handle it.”
Once the injury healed enough for Bradford to return to the Rangers, it took a few outings to return to the form he exhibited early in the season. In his return to the majors, he met up with the team in St. Louis, where he came out of the bullpen in a relief effort. Tommy Pham had just been re-acquired by the Cardinals from the White Sox when he hammered a grand slam off Bradford and received a standing ovation from the Redbird faithful.
“I was like a dog going back to the dugout with his tail between his legs,” Bradford remembered. “That was not how I envisioned my rejoining of the team going like, especially not after the early success I’d had earlier in the year.”
However, the Rangers coaching staff didn’t seem concerned over one tough outing. He was brought back into the rotation to finish out the season, proving yet again to be a reliable asset to the starting five.
For as tumultuous as it was for the Rangers as a whole, Bradford’s 2024 season went remarkably well. In 13 starts he finished the year with a 6-3 record. He threw 76.1 innings, struck out 70 batters, issued just 13 free passes, and ended the year boasting a 3.54 ERA.
Yet, in spite of the success he enjoyed personally in 2024, Bradford’s perspective hasn’t shifted as he looks towards the 2025 season.
“I’m definitely not the type of guy that’s going to say I’ve earned a spot,” Bradford stated. “I’m much more in the mindset that there’s a lot of guys who want to play professional baseball. If you want to be a starter, there’s five spots on a team, maybe six. Those are really important spots and everybody’s vying for it.
“I’m under the impression that I’ve got to earn my job every single year, especially as a guy that doesn’t have the velocity or the stuff that is the wow factor. I’m a softer-throwing, left-handed pitcher who needs to command his pitches. I think for the rest of my career it’s going to be something where I’ve got to go out and earn my spot every year. And I’m okay with that.”
Following the end of the regular season, players took three weeks off. Bradford and his wife, Madi, toured Europe and he took a family hunting trip. Before the Los Angeles Dodgers were crowned the World Series champions, the Rangers were back to work, getting started on their offseason lifting program.
“Guys who understand how to take advantage of the six to eight weeks in the offseason to build up their body, build strength, and to be able to stay healthy the next year is huge,” Bradford said. “I know Marcus Semien has been one of the best guys in MLB at staying healthy and staying on the field the last three years. He’s local. I see him every day when I go into the stadium to work out. He knows how to go about the game in the right way. I think guys like that set the example and the tone for the younger guys coming up, we can learn a lot from Marcus.”
The Rangers aren’t spending time licking their wounds this offseason. The players are well aware of Manager Bruce Bochy’s cadence from his time in San Francisco where he led the Giants to World Series wins in 2010, 2012, and 2014 while missing the postseason in 2011 and 2013. According to Bradford, the expectation looking ahead to 2025 is to continue that cadence and hoist the World Series trophy once again next October.
“We all understand this offseason is going to be big,” he explained. “[Chris Young] made it really, really clear to us as a team and to the organization, his expectation next year is to win a World Series. That’s what we want to do. We tasted that last year. We know we can do it. We know what it takes to get there. Now we just got to go do it.
“This year we came up short. Injury ridden, player performance ridden, whatever you want to say, but next year we’re going to hit the ground running again. That’s our goal.”
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