Simeon Woods Richardson has been nothing short of spectacular for the Twins over the past month or so. He has looked supremely confident on the mound with complete control of his full arsenal of pitches.

Asked about Woods Richardson’s impressive stretch, manager Rocco Baldelli summed it up perfectly, saying, “He has just been better more often.”

A simple statement that encapsulates the consistency with which Woods Richardson has pitched for the Twins lately. He was nearly untouchable a couple of weeks ago in a win over the Seattle Mariners, for example, then followed it up with another solid performance in a win over the Miami Marlins.

“If he loses something that he wants, he gets it back more quickly and finds it,” Baldelli said. “He’s finding ways to make those adjustments pitch to pitch, as opposed to batter to batter or inning to inning.”

Those adjustments were apparent on Tuesday night at Target Field as Woods Richardson set the tone for the Twins in what ended up being a runaway 8-1 win over the Chicago Cubs. He scattered a pair of hits across five scoreless innings before handing the ball over to the bullpen.

What was working so well?

“Just attacking the strike zone,” Woods Richardson said. “They’re a really good team. The way to navigate that is to try to attack the strike zone. There’s no way to dodge it.”

That’s been the approach from Woods Richardson ever since returning from a brief stint with the St. Paul Saints.

“Just getting sent back down to Triple A was a reset button,” Woods Richardson said. “You have to figure out what went wrong and go back to the drawing board a little bit.”

The slice of humble pie proved to be exactly what Woods Richardson needed.

“His outings are starting to look alike right now,” Baldelli said. “He’s getting ahead. He’s getting a lot of good weak contact. He’s pitching with all of his pitches and mixing exceptionally well.”

It got a little nervy for the Twins after Baldelli opted for a pitching change as Danny Coulombe walked the first batter he faced, and later served up a single to Inver Grove Heights native Michael Busch to put runners on the corners.

That set the stage for Brock Stewart, who fell behind in the count against Dansby Swanson, then battled back for a clutch strikeout to put an end to the scoring threat.

Most of the run support for Woods Richardson came long after he had exited the game. Though he was already in line for the win thanks to the Twins pushing a pair of runs across early in the game, the offensive outburst late left no doubt.

A home run from Ryan Jeffers scored Byron Buxton and was immediately followed by a home run from Willi Castro. Royce Lewis later singled to score Carlos Correa before Harrison Bader cleared the bases with another home run that served as the exclamation point.

“There were several innings in the middle of the game where we smoked the ball all over the field,” Baldelli said. “Sometimes you just have to keep hitting the ball on the barrel, and you’re going to eventually score runs.”

All of it added up to a deserved win for Woods Richardson.

“We know that Sim is a guy who can pitch in the big leagues really, really effectively, so it’s good to see him having that success,” Jeffers said. “We need him to have that success to get to where we want to get to.”