CLEARWATER, Fla. \u2013 Three years to the day after his first Grapefruit League start, Andrew Painter made his second Sunday.<\/p>\n
Finally.<\/p>\n
In between the two outings, there has been an elbow injury, surgery, months of physical rehabilitation, and a difficult comeback season last year at Triple-A for the most hyped Phillies pitching prospect since Cole Hamels.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all in the past now, all learning experience, if you will. Painter, still just 22, has made a minor adjustment in his delivery. His early-camp bullpen work has drawn raves from coaches and catchers. And his first start of the spring was impressive \u2013 two perfect innings against the New York Yankees in front of a packed house at sun-splashed BayCare Ballpark.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he was great,\u201d manager Rob Thomson said. \u201cVery encouraging. He got ahead in the count. He attacked.\u201d<\/p>\n
J.T. Realmuto, the man who caught Painter, was equally impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was really good,\u201d Realmuto said. \u201cHe really pounded the strike zone. A lot of early, weak contact, which is good. I was impressed with his fastball. He beat a lot of really good fastball hitters in the zone with his fastball so that\u2019s always a good sign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve caught him in some \u2018pens, and this was the first time live. Every time, the command has been really good. He\u2019s able to work both sides of the plate and go up and down. That\u2019s something that most of our starters do a good job with and that\u2019s why they\u2019re so successful. Being able to see him do that is important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Command and control were issues for Painter at Triple A-last season. In 22 starts and 106 2\/3 innings, he allowed 10 hits\/3.9 walks per nine innings. He pitched to a 5.40 ERA. His projected \u201cJuly-ish\u201d arrival in Philadelphia never materialized. This year, it will happen. The Phillies are committed to giving him a shot in the season-opening rotation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel real,\u201d Painter admitted. \u201cI\u2019m still trying to take it one day at a time and look forward to each start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last season, Painter\u2019s arm angle dropped slightly. He addressed the issue in the offseason and has continued to do so in camp. The team\u2019s pitching coaches believe a return to his former (higher) arm angle will bring back his control and command.<\/p>\n
So far, so good.<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJes\u00fas Luzardo joined Spencer McKercher and Sean Kane on the Phillies Talk Podcast and discussed the upside of top pitching prospect Andrew Painter.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was going to come naturally anyway,\u201d Painter said. \u201cBut I think getting back to those positions has definitely helped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis offseason as a whole, even going back to early January, I\u2019ve had a little more attention to detail in catch play and a little more intentionality with the target, whether it\u2019s catch play, bullpen, flat ground, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Painter did not face the Yankees’ A lineup Sunday, but he was extremely efficient, nonetheless. He threw just 20 pitches in his two innings of work, 14 of which were strikes. His outs came so quickly, he was not able to work as much on his changeup as he would have liked, but the spring is still young. He threw six different pitches, but mostly relied on his four-seam fastball, which he threw 13 times. It topped out at 97 mph.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt pretty comfortable out there,\u201d Painter said. \u201cRight when I toed the rubber, I felt in control of the game. It didn\u2019t speed up on me. That\u2019s the big thing, just take deep breaths and not allow the game to speed up on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yankees manager Aaron Boone had never seen Painter before, but Triple-A manager Shelley Duncan, who made the trip to Clearwater, had.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know there’s been some inconsistency there,\u201d Boone said. \u201cBut (Duncan) is like, ‘When he’s good …’\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cToday got my attention.”<\/p>\n
Painter used four different pitches \u2013 curveball, four-seamer, changeup and slider — in striking out Jasson Dom\u00ednguez to end the top of the first inning. The final slider was up a little in the zone, but Dom\u00ednguez could not get that bat on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt caught too much plate, but it was a really sharp slider and that\u2019s why you get the swing and miss on a pitch you think location-wise might get hit,\u201d Realmuto said. \u201cThat\u2019s just his ability to mix pitches. That was the first slider (Dom\u00ednguez) saw that at-bat. He saw three or four different types of pitches there. So, the fact he can already do that at this age to a lefty hitter is pretty impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Realmuto is eager to work more with Painter. He has been for a while, but the elbow injury,\u00a0the Tommy John surgery, and the struggles of 2025 got in the way.<\/p>\n
The path is clearing now.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very mature for his age,\u201d Realmuto said. \u201cHis demeanor is something I really look forward to working with.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t have to come in and light the world on fire, which I know the Philly media at times, or even just the fan base, that\u2019s what they expect. This game is really hard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not asking him to come in and be our ace and win the Cy Young, not that he can\u2019t do that. But in this clubhouse, those are not our expectations. We just need him to take the ball every five days and be himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Painter\u2019s next chance to be himself will come on Saturday when he faces the Red Sox in Clearwater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEARWATER, Fla. \u2013 Three years to the day after his first Grapefruit League start, Andrew Painter made his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,4,144,25,4216,40,16702],"class_list":{"0":"post-601154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","12":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","13":"tag-phillies","14":"tag-phillies-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116158169370637203","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}