Preseason Outlook
Role: #2/#3 Starter
Risk: High – Painter flashed a bunch of promising attributes in his return from injury, especially in his number of innings pitched. However, his pitch shapes and command were a muddled mess, as he combined throwing new pitches and a return to high level competition. This led to struggles all year and questions about how high his ceiling actually is.
Season Stats
| Team (LVL) | G | GS | W-L | IP | ERA | HR/9 | BB% | K% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LHV (AAA) | 5 | 5 | 1-2 | 23.2 | 4.56 | 0.8 | 7.9% | 24.8% |
| PHI (MLB) | 25 | 23 | 5-8 | 126.2 | 5.40 | 1.5 | 8.5% | 20.8% |
Season Review
It is hard to have a conversation about Andrew Painter’s season without looking at it as two halves with a trip to AAA in the middle (he was demoted after his start on June 17 and returned to the major start on July 31). So here are the basic MLB stats as above, but split around that trip to AAA.
| Months | Games | IP | ERA | HR/9 | BB% | K% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March-June | 14 | 65.0 | 7.06 | 1.9 | 8.0% | 17.7% |
| July-September | 11 | 61.2 | 3.65 | 1.0 | 9.1% | 24.5% |
Prior to the demotion, Painter had been struggling more and more with both his command and the success of his fastball in particular. It was looking a lot like Painter in AAA last year where he was not able to pitch safely in the zone and this led to him expanding the zone more without a rise in chase rate. This showed in the underlying numbers in our same pre and post demotion split time frame.
| Time | Chase vR | Chase vL | Z-Con vR | Z-Con vL | Whiff vR | Whiff vL | wOBA vR | wOBA vL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Half | 32.8% | 31.4% | 85.4% | 87.0% | 10.6% | 9.5% | .389 | .389 |
| 2nd Half | 32.6% | 38.5% | 80.1% | 85.5% | 14.3% | 11.8% | .283 | .277 |
So this all asks the question of what actually changed when Painter went to AAA. The harder to really get a good breakdown on all of the effects is that his delivery was tweaked some with his arm angle coming slightly down and getting a touch more extension. This might slight pitch shape improvements to all of his pitches with a touch more glove-side movement to his breaking balls and fastballs. He did have improved spin rates across the board as well, a thing that he has mostly attributed to the biggest change in his arsenal, replacing his splitter with a circle change changeup. To attempt to avoid pitch tipping and to get the best grip on his splitter, Painter would start in a splitter grip in the glove and then adjust to the actual pitch from there. He found when he moved to a circle change grip he was able to transition to better grips on his secondary pitches. Now the change wasn’t just about the grips on his other pitches, it was about the performance of the pitch itself. Offspeed pitches are a connected piece of an ecosystem, so it is important to look at them in relation to his 4-seam fastball.
| Month | FA IVB | FA Horz | FA Speed | CH/FS IVB | CH/FS Horz | CH/FS Speed | Vert Rel Pt | Hor Rel Pt | Extension | Arm Angle |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar/Apr | 16.0 | 3.3 | 96.5 | 6.5 | 11.3 | 87.2 | 6.57 | 2.15 | 6.5 | 48.8 |
| May | 16.9 | 2.2 | 96.6 | 7.3 | 9.8 | 87.3 | 6.47 | 2.21 | 6.5 | 47.2 |
| Aug | 16.7 | 2.2 | 96.5 | 4.7 | 12.8 | 90.5 | 6.48 | 2.27 | 6.6 | 43.6 |
| Sept | 17.5 | 1.4 | 96.7 | 4.9 | 12.2 | 90.4 | 6.5 | 2.11 | 6.6 | 45.5 |
We can see the change to 4-seam fastball movement and arm slot here, but we can really see the difference in movement between the splitter and changeup. The changeup is a pitch that has less velocity separation, but it makes up for that by being a very hard changeup that has even greater vertical and horizontal separation from his fastball. This makes it less reliant on pitcher swing at the wrong speed and more trying to account for what is a nearly a 1 foot difference in both vertical and horizontal movement as opposed to something had closer to 6″-8″ of separation. So what did this actually do from an outcome perspective?
| Month | CH/FS% vR | CH/FS% vL | CH/FS Whiff% vR | CH/FS Whiff% vL | FA Whiff% vR | FA Whiff% vL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar/Apr | 4.0% | 14.3% | 0.0% | 36.8% | 13.0% | 6.9% |
| May | 2.5% | 26.1% | 66.7% | 40.0% | 15.8% | 8.7% |
| August | 15.0% | 31.3% | 37.5% | 23.9% | 33.3% | 23.4% |
| September | 12.7% | 38.5% | 28.6% | 44.4% | 33.3% | 11.6% |
The new changeup performed about the same generating whiffs against left handed batters as the splitter. He was also able to greatly increase his usage of it and we see immediate improvements to his fastball outcomes (his wOBA and xwOBA against LHBs on fastballs also improved). The big difference and improvement was the performance against right handed batters. There has been a decent amount written about same side changeups, and that usage is an indicator of it being a plus pitch. It was part of an overall re-shaped arsenal against RHB with a reduction in sinker and slider usage, and an increase in sweeper and 4-seam usage in addition to the use of the changeup.
All of these changes added optimism, but Painter saved his best appearance for last, pitching 3 scoreless innings in Game 2 of the NL Wild Card series to briefly save the season. He mostly was a fastball-changeup pitcher with the fastball averaging just under 99 mph in that outing. He did only get one whiff on the fastball, and the command was not pretty, but he made some real big pitches in a big moment. That appearance will be the last impression of his season heading into big expectations for 2027.
Future Outlook
Assuming the changes the changeup and the affects on the fastball are real, Painter is trending towards being an inconsistent mid rotation starter. Despite the improvements, his fastball is ok at best, and it is hard to be a dominant starter with an ok fastball is the rest of the arsenal isn’t great. That is likely to leave him as looking like a front line starter some days, or innings, and like a back end starter at other times.
Now as we saw even throughout 2026 for Painter, and with his rotation mates over the years, none of this is set in stone and unchanging. The clearest step forward is that if the velocity he had in 3 innings of the postseason, and when he needed it leverage situations, is something he can more comfortably sit at. That gear might not be in there though and may only be in flashes. There are also improvements to be made in his fastball and changeup command as he still wastes too many pitches and leave others in very hittable spots. He doesn’t need to be precise, but he needs to reduce the easy swing decisions for hitters.
The bigger area of improvement is his suite of breaking balls. He already was throwing his sweeper more to lefties, and his curveball has never really been a sustained positive pitch for him. While, generally throwing sweepers to opposite side batters is a bad decision, the Phillies have had a lot of success with turning that pitch into a real weapon for Jesus Luzardo. The same could be said of his slider/cutter which he needs to command better because it is an important pitch against both sides, especially to compete in the strike zone. Whether it is shape or velocity improvements, or opening up different usage patterns, one of the paths towards being a front line starter is turning either a breaking ball or the collection of them into a plus plus pitch. He needs another way to miss bats and to prevent hitters from just sitting in the arm side movement range, and he has flashed improved feel for spin after making the changeup/split grip change to have something to work with there. All of this is fairly hypothetical, but it has been something that Caleb Cotham has had success with.
That is a lot of moving parts, and that doesn’t touch on his sinker or any other changes the Phillies may look to make. It will be interesting to see the continuing change of adjustments over the next few years and maybe revisit the journey in a few years time.