PHILADELPHIA — In the dugout between innings last season, Andrew Painter would show Triple-A catcher Payton Henry his splayed fingers. A blister bloomed on his right index finger, the result of adding a changeup to his repertoire. It occurred so frequently that Painter figured out how many changeups he could throw before the wound would open.
“I’ve got one more of these in the tank before this thing slices open,” he told Henry one night last May in Syracuse, N.Y. Henry called for the remaining changeup in the fifth inning, Painter drawing a swinging strikeout on the pitch.
There is still a small red callus on Painter’s index finger. It is one scar among many from an up-and-down summer at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where Painter produced a 5.40 ERA in 106 2/3 innings and struggled to locate his fastball in his return from Tommy John surgery.
Now, after a spring training that featured better fastball command and feel for his secondaries, Painter will make his major-league debut on Tuesday at Citizens Bank Park.
The moment has come far later than many expected for the Phillies’ top pitching prospect, but would not have been possible if not for the lessons learned on difficult days in Allentown, Pa.
It was Painter’s first time pitching regularly since he was 19 years old, dominating High A and Double A hitters. And he was handling a lot of asks: staying healthy, learning how to game plan, developing two new pitches while tweaking another and working on his delivery. Everything compounded.
Some days, Painter said last summer, he had no idea where his pitches would land. His new pitches were a work in progress, tweaks ongoing. He could command the changeup only every other start for half of the season because of the blisters. The progress was not linear. It was frustrating.
“When you miss that amount of time,” Low-A Clearwater manager Aaron Barrett said, “it just doesn’t all click at once. I mean, I wish it did. That just doesn’t happen.”
But the measurements used by Barrett, the former rehab coordinator who continued to work with Painter last season, and Triple-A pitching coaches Phil Cundari and Matt Ellmyer calculated success differently than on paper.
Andrew Painter, the Phillies’ first-round pick in 2021, will debut Tuesday against the Nationals. (Elsa / Getty Images)
Painter made all of his starts last season, which Barrett said was the ultimate goal no matter what happened, and he learned. It wasn’t just that he figured things out, but also how he went about it. Cundari embraces an idea he calls “quality of struggle,” which he used with Painter in Triple A. In the right-hander’s case, struggling well meant understanding the process of development amid the ebbs and flows.
“You stay focused on the process of long-term gains,” Cundari said, “and I really believe Andy understood that more like a seasoned veteran that, regardless of him struggling halfway through the season, he understood the process was going to lead to a more elite arsenal and a future, great big leaguer.”
That didn’t mean there would be zero frustration in the moment. It meant zooming out to put what happened in context.
Most days Painter pitched, he reviewed what happened and would talk through things with Cundari and Ellmyer the next day. It was evidence-based. But there was an early August night when Painter had been picked apart by the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate, a lineup that featured almost all lefties.
Game review took place that night. It was Painter’s decision.
“Sometimes it’s best to let the emotions subside,” Ellmyer said, “and then look at things a little bit more rationally. Other times, it is kind of good to get the frustration out and be able to talk it through. Him being able to talk through it aired out a little bit in terms of how he was feeling, but (he was) able to get back to the headspace of, ‘I understand this is a process.’”
Doing game review the same night allowed Painter to go off the top of his head, he said, without “going back and looking at what was real.” It was one way of slowing down the game, he said, helping him remember it and process it that night.
Andrew Painter logged a 5.40 ERA last season in Triple A, but made all of his starts and learned through his ups and downs. (Mike Janes / Four Seam Images via Associated Press)
The good intermingling with bad could be puzzling at times. There was one start in Omaha, Neb., he found especially frustrating, giving up six runs yet drawing 18 whiffs — including 13 on the changeup. As he sat with the results, he knew what went wrong.
“I would fall behind 2-0 to a guy, and then I would make a good pitch — like, up-and-away fastball,” Painter said. “But at that point, it’s like, you’re behind in the count. The hitter’s geared up for a fastball there. You can make a good pitch in a bad count. The hitter still probably has the advantage. That’s a realization of just how important it is to get ahead … and how much easier it gets when you are in those high-leverage counts.”
These were not lessons learned when Painter was overwhelming hitters in 2022 with his electric fastball in Double A. They came in real time, as he faced batters he’d never seen outside of spring training. And, for many months last summer, these moments stayed on Painter’s mind between starts.
Being curious, Painter’s coaches say, is one of his best attributes. Last year, he brought ideas to his pitching coaches and asked lots of questions, particularly when working on his sweeper. Something didn’t work, so Painter brought it back to them with an idea. It was an improvement. Then Ellmyer and Cundari had an idea. More improvement. It was step by step, day by day.
But, as Painter pitched the worst he ever had, the curiosity could sometimes lead to over-analyzing between starts.
“He’s constantly looking for any possible way to get better,” Barrett said. “And that can be very fun. It can be a challenge, too, where you’re trying to steer him in the best direction, so it’s making sure that it’s not too much.”
Painter felt the overthinking begin to ease only later in the season, with more outings under his belt. He realized he was giving hitters too much credit.
“It’s just knowing that, when you’re on the mound, you’re in the driver’s seat,” Painter said. “You’re expected to succeed most of the time. That’s how it goes. If you succeed 70 percent of the time as a pitcher, you’re probably not doing that good. I think it’s just going in with that mindset: You have to know that you’re in the driver’s seat. You have to think that way and go up there with the confidence that you have the advantage as the pitcher. I think it’s not reading too much into a hitter’s strengths or this or that. You have to pitch to your strengths and control those things.”
Perhaps it sounds obvious. But that was part of Painter’s struggle last season: losing the upper hand on the mound. Tactics like breath work, pickoffs and switching the ball helped him feel in control.
And, after a summer of pitching, Painter understood that, sometimes, he could get away with a bad pitch. Sometimes, he liked the pitch and it ended up a homer. It’s baseball. It happens.
“After enough times of that happening, it was like, ‘I’ve got to move on from it,’” he said. “Whatever happens, you move on. And those good pitches that you’re making, just keep on trying to execute. You keep executing, and after a matter of time, things will start going your way.”
“He’s constantly looking for any possible way to get better,” Low-A Clearwater manager Aaron Barrett said of Andrew Painter. (Mike Carlson / Getty Images)
There were days last summer when Painter took the mound with feel for only a few pitches due to a combination of the blisters, command issues lingering after surgery and figuring out his fastball shape. Those issues have eased, but there will still be days in the majors when Painter simply does not have the feel for some pitches. That is the life of a pitcher, and now he knows he can survive it.
The linear path to stardom that Painter was on at 19 took a diversion. But it has led to the same place. A week and a half before his 23rd birthday, he will ascend the dugout steps at Citizens Bank Park, take a deep breath and throw some warm-up pitches.
At some point, he will grip his changeup, callus lining up against the baseball. And, strike or ball, he will move forward.