Last scored matchup
Taj isn't on today's slate. He was last scored 11 days ago, at home against Texas Rangers on Sunday, September 27, 2026. This page refreshes with new projections as soon as he's back in a lineup.
Season line
31 starts, 12-6, 3.73 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 178.1 innings. He's struck out 205 over that span, against 76 walks. This is the baseline the matchup adjusts from — the model starts here and then asks what the specific lineup he's facing does to strikeout arms, how the park plays, and how deep he's likely to go.
He throws right-handed
Taj throws right-handed, which is the ordinary case and means fewer wild swings in the lineup he faces. Opposing managers aren't restacking against him the way they would a left-hander, so his projection moves more on the quality of the lineup than on its handedness. What does move it: how deep he's been going lately, and whether the lineup in front of him strikes out.
His last 5 starts
Taj has 36 strikeouts in 31.0 innings across his last 5 starts, a 10.5 K/9, with a 2.61 ERA over that stretch and 13 walks. Strikeouts are the one pitcher market where our model has found real, graded room — projected workload and the specific lineup he draws move that number more than a season-long rate does. Start-by-start detail is in the log below.
Strikeouts and control
Taj has 205 strikeouts and 76 walks in 178.3 innings this season — 10.3 K/9 against 3.8 BB/9, a 2.7-to-1 ratio. That's around league-typical control — enough to work deep when the lineup cooperates, not enough to bail him out of a bad matchup.
What his floor looks like
Taj has made 31 starts this season, averaging 5.8 innings with a 3.73 ERA across them. In the 12 starts we hold detailed lines for, he got through five or more innings 11 times. That ratio is the honest read on his floor, and it's what separates an arm worth projecting on the outs board from one whose good starts are unpredictable enough that the market prices them better than we do.
How long he goes
Taj is averaging 5.8 innings a start across his last 8 outings, with a high of 7.0 and about 95 pitches a night. He's going deep enough that the outs and strikeout lines stay live into the seventh, which is where most of the value on those boards sits. Expected batters faced is one of the bigger inputs to his score for exactly this reason.
A long gap since his last start
Taj hasn't started in 16 days. That's the single most useful warning on a pitcher's page, and it's the model's weakest spot. A gap that long usually means an injured-list stint, and a first start back is often on a strict pitch limit that no stat line reveals — books frequently don't post an outs line at all in that spot. Our projection is built on his healthy workload, so it will overshoot a shortened rehab start. Read any projection here with that in mind until he's stretched back out.
His best start in the log
Taj's high-water mark was Tuesday, August 25, 2026 at ATH: 11 strikeouts over 6.7 innings, 4 earned runs. One start doesn't set a projection — the model works off the blend of his recent work against the specific lineup in front of him — but it does show the ceiling when the matchup lines up.
How the model reads him
The number on Taj is about tonight, not about him. Strip out the name and the model is asking one question: what does this specific lineup do to this kind of arm, in this park, for as many batters as he's likely to face? That gets scored against every other starter on the slate. The combination math is proprietary and re-tuned every week. The grading isn't — it's all public, including the misses.
What we'd flag
Books don't price every player — coverage tops out around 87% even for confirmed starters, so "no line" here usually means no book posted one rather than a gap in our data. Lineups change late, and an afternoon projection can be stale by first pitch. And the model is tuned across hundreds of graded outcomes, so one game tells you nothing about whether it's working. For Taj specifically, he's coming off a 16-day gap.