Phillies 2023 Top Prospects – Painter 1

Andrew Painter is probably the best Phillies pitching prospect of my lifetime. The only real arguments are possibly Cole Hamels and Aaron Nola in the exact moment before they made their major league debut, but no big deal as they are also easily the two best home grown Phillies pitchers of my lifetime. No matter the shape of his career, the career of Andrew Painter is something we will talk about for decades.

1. Andrew Painter, RHP

Age: 4/10/03 (19)
Acquired: Drafted by the Phillies in the 1st Round of the 2021 Draft
B/T: R/R
H/W: 6’7” 215lbs
2022 Stats:

Role: #1 Starter
Risk: High – Part of being an ace starting pitcher is proving that you are an ace. The complete package for Painter is the stuff to be an ace wrapped up in a pitcher that has not yet turned 20 years old. However, he still hasn’t faced batters above AA and he has only topped out at 103.2 innings in a season, not the 180-200 that an ace needs to do every season. If you said what is his risk to be a #2 it is probably medium, because he is that polished, and he is probably as safe as any pitching prospect there has been in a while to be a #3. The ace pinnacle is hard, and even for someone of Painter’s talent there are a lot of things that can come short of achieving that level.
Summary: It is an extremely weird thing to say, but if you just pull up a game of Andrew Painter he does not immediately jump out as the near consensus best pitching prospect in the minors. He looks very good, but there is a disconnect between the pitcher you are watching and the stats you see. Hitters seem to take called strikes on slurvy breaking balls in the zone, swing at a ton of fastballs up and out of the zone, and just generally seem to be unable to square up any pitch. In an age of aces having their whole arsenal thrown at speeds starting with a 9 or with highlight reel movement, Painter’s mid 80s collection of offspeed pitches calls to mind more of a soft tosser than a modern ace. To get a good appreciation of the specialness of Painter, it can be helpful to watch a few starts and really watch all the pieces come together. To do that in writing, it can be helpful to pull Painter apart into the individual pitches and attributes and then put them all together again and watch it fall into place.

To start, Painter is a tall lanky right handed pitcher. He has a strong lower half and uses it well in his delivery. He repeats his delivery abnormally well for a pitcher of his age and size. He works very quickly from a three quarters delivery. His best pitch is his fastball. He generally sits about 94 to 98, will reach up to 99-100 in most starts, and it topped out at 101.5 early in the year with Clearwater. The Phillies have helped with the shape on the pitch, and now it sits at about 2400-2500 RPM with elite levels of induced vertical break (rise). He also naturally gets good extension due to his size, though that does mean he doesn’t have the flat approach angle of a Griff McGarry type fastball. However, Painter shows plus command of the pitch, able to hit both the top and bottom of the strike zone. At the top of the zone, the pitch is near impossible to square up, and even if a batter makes contact, the result is very likely to be a pop out or other weak contact. Due to the downhill angle and rise, he seems to get some extra room above the zone where hitters think it will drop in for a strike, and while major league hitters won’t chase as much up there, it is a putaway spot for him. The characteristics of the pitch still play in the lower parts of the zone, and it is an extreme downhill hard pitch down in the zone, and hitters can have trouble squaring it up. He does miss uncompetitively up out of the zone a few too many times, but otherwise it is at least a plus plus pitch and given everything else going on, may be a true elite pitch.

Painter’s most used secondary pitch is his slider. He throws it about 80-84, touching up to 86, with good sweep. He can throw it in the zone and for chases, and will also throw it in on the feet of lefties. It does visually look a bit slurvy, and it looks like he leaves a lot of them up in the zone where you think hitters would be able to handle them. It is an easy plus pitch, but not a visually dominant one. Painter’s other breaking ball is a curveball that is about 78-80, touching up to 82. It has 12-6 movement, but he does occasionally have it slurve a bit, and he will need to just clean up the consistency a bit. It has good depth, but it isn’t a big time hammer. He will get on top of some that indicate there might be a plus version of it, but it might just end up as an above average pitch. Painter used his changeup even less frequently, but it has good fade, and at 86 to 88, T89, it has good velocity separation from his fastball. Given the small number thrown, I don’t have a good feel for the arm speed deception off of his fastball. There is at least an above average changeup in there, and given his general feel for pitching, it would not be surprising if he has a plus changeup in the long run.

That full four pitch mix on its own is very very good, but what happens when it comes together is why Painter is the high level pitcher he is. It starts with the fastball and slider. Painter works up in the zone with his fastball, and then tunnels the slider off of this. This means that the fastball up and into a right-handed batter breaks as a slider to about mid height of the strike zone on the outside third of the zone. To lefties he will break it on their hands or on their feet off of the pitch outside. He will even break them down on the top of the zone off the path of a fastball that is a good bit out of the strike zone. This relationship means that Painter actually throws a good amount of his sliders in or very close to the strike zone, and gets a good amount of them for called strikes. The velocity difference from his fastball means that if a hitter gears up to hit the fastball, they have no chance of getting to the slider.

There are definitely some eyebrows that are raised by a power pitcher throwing their slider in the mid 80s, and with the slurviness of Painter’s slider, it apparently can be confused for a curveball. When he throws another pitch in the high-70s/low-80s it can look like he is losing consistency on his pitches. However, his curveball is a distinct pitch thrown at a slightly higher spin rate with distinct tilt and spin efficiency. Jarrett Seidler of Baseball Prospectus wrote earlier this year about how having two breaking balls with distinct movement is an intentional pitch arsenal construction (he also touches on sweepers which also is applicable here). The two distinct breaking balls play off of each other, leaving the hitter left in between two different movement profiles. In the above fastball-slider construction, the hitter can theoretically try and sit on the slider in the strike zone. Painter will mix in the curveball off of this tunnel, where it is a strike and the batter looking outside will be forced to try and hit the pitch inside, leading to poor contact. Late in games, I have seen Painter leave the fastball aside to a batter on the third time through the order and throw the slider to the corner and the off the plate, and then use the curveball off of that to a batter looking for the slider away. The curveball also gives a vertical threat to Painter’s arsenal, allowing him to work up in the zone while threatening the lower third.

Speaking of threatening the lower third, the relationship between fastball and changeup seems much more conventional for Painter. Part of what makes Painter so good is that he shows the hitter that he can throw the fastball to both the top and bottom of the zone, so hitters are not able to focus in completely on the fastball-slider game up in the zone. The changeup plays off of the fastball in the lower part of the zone, where he is able to run it off the bottom corner to lefties, or in under the bats of righties. It is unlikely we see him work the changeup up in the zone, but its existence is the piece that allows him to have full use of the strike zone.

In many ways, Painter is the culmination of new and old school. His fastball and sweeper are both extremely in vogue pitches. The double breaking ball is something that we are re-learning has intentional value and is not a byproduct of pitch inconsistency. All of that symphony of hard philosophy is wrapped up in a workhorse frame that fills the zone with strikes, working all 4 quadrants and using a varied pitch mix to keep hitters off balance. In an era of hard throwing arsenals and optimized pitch usage, his arsenal looks more old school.

We are also talking about a 19 year old, and while precocious, he is not a finished product. Major league batters are not going to all just blindly fall for the fastball and slider. He is going to need to tighten up the command of both, making sure he is throwing competitive fastballs both just up and out of the hitting range and in the strike zone, and that he is not leaving obvious sliders in hitters’ nitro zones. He does need to tighten up the curveball movement and command and lose some of the slurvy blend. Given his dominant fastball, he is always going to be fastball heavy, so having a changeup he can sell off of that is going to be devastating. There are probably going to be starts as he grows where hitters figure him out a bit on the 2nd or 3rd time through the order. There is a chance he gets tired at points as he works his way up to a full workload. He has a chance to be a truly special pitcher, and it is ok if that is not an immediate outcome and takes until he is in his early 20s.
2023 Outlook: Everything indicates that the #5 spot in the Phillies rotation is Painter’s to lose. Assuming he looks like himself this spring, he probably breaks camp with the Phillies. They will do whatever they can to keep him pitching throughout the year, whether it is 6 man rotations, shorter starts, turns skipped, or even short IL trips. If he pitches most of the year in the majors, it is likelier that he pitches like a mid rotation arm flashing front end potential, than an immediate ace.
ETA: 2023
Previous Rank: 2