Inside Painter's impressive start to his MLB career

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PHILADELPHIA -- Andrew Painter impressed a lot of people on Sunday.

It started with the folks inside the Phillies’ clubhouse, particularly his teammates and coaches. Painter woke up with a terrible migraine in the morning before his start against Arizona. He threw up a few times. He got to the ballpark and hoped he might feel good enough to start. He did not, but he rallied to start the third inning.

Painter pitched five innings against the Diamondbacks. He allowed three hits, one run and one walk and struck out seven.

“The last game is a really good example of the whole show,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said Wednesday. “How to handle pain, the ability to handle things, the ability to handle information, to go out and pitch and compete. He’s still in some ways a kid. I mean that in a great way. There’s joy. He’s playing a game. There’s no jaded experience or whatever you want to call it. He’s out there competing. He’s having fun.

“But then you have a game where he’s sick and literally throwing up, and he just stayed steady. That’s really hard to do.”

Painter, 23, will make the third start (fourth appearance) of his MLB career on Sunday night against the Braves. He is 1-0 with a 3.77 ERA in his first three appearances, striking out 16 and walking three in 14 1/3 innings.

He’s been fun to watch.

He’s been fun to watch, even when he hasn’t pitched his best. Painter allowed nine hits, four runs and one walk and struck out one in four innings in San Francisco on April 6. He left the game, then returned to the dugout to watch the game with his teammates.

Typically, starters leave the game, go to the clubhouse for treatment and watch the rest of the game on TV.

“I think it was about the sixth or seventh, I turned to [assistant pitching coach] Mark Lowy and I said, ‘Do you think he needs to be out there? Or he wants to be out here?’” Cotham said.

“It’s kind of like a little bit of both,” Painter said. “I’m just trying to get a feel for the game, try to learn a little bit while I’m out there. You see a lot of stuff happen during the game, but you might not exactly know why. So I’ll ask questions so I know why things are happening. But I want to be out there. If they’re out there, I’ll be out there.”

Painter’s rotation mates have set good examples for him. They routinely watch games together from the railing of the dugout.

They talk hitters, swings, pitch sequences, pitch grips and game situations.

“I tell him sometimes, if he ever needs anything on some hitters, I can give you some information just because I’ve faced certain guys a lot,” Phillies right-hander Aaron Nola said on The Phillies Show. “I knew it was important when I first came up. Aaron Harang in the dugout. Chooch [Carlos Ruiz] and Chad Billingsley. Cole [Hamels]. All those guys. Jeff Francoeur. I would always sit on the bench the whole game. Harang would always tell me, ‘Yeah, watching it on TV is good, but during the game you learn a lot more watching the game in the dugout. You can pick up on things that you can’t pick up on TV.’”

“There’s just those times where it’s like, ‘Man, it feels like a breaking ball works here,’” Cotham said. “If you’re not there, if you’re not watching it, if you’re not locked into every pitch, you won’t ever get that feeling.”

Painter will study the iPad, too. He will look for pitchers that are comparable to him and see how they attack hitters.

What worked? What didn’t?

“I’m kind of curious about that stuff,” Painter said.

Painter talked about these things while holding a football last week at Oracle Park. He often throws a football on the field.

“It wasn’t until rehab [from Tommy John surgery in July 2023] when I started bringing my own football and throwing it,” Painter said. “It’s just good to get loose, try to be athletic, try to get the body moving. I know it’s a different throwing motion, but it’s just being athletic and moving.”

“I mean, he throws a nice spiral,” Cotham said. “I think he’s a world-class punter, too.”

Painter often punted at Cressey Sports Performance, the highly regarded South Florida training facility, which has been the offseason home to Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Corey Kluber and others. One of his Triple-A Lehigh Valley pitching coaches, Matt Ellmyer, said Painter had Division I-punting talent.

“Yeah,” Painter said, laughing. “I had some free time. I just kind of go on these little side quests. I’d have like 60-yard tempo runs, so I’d try to make it a little more fun. I’d bring a football out there, I’d punt it, run my sprint, pick up the ball, punt it again, run and get it again.”

Painter has only thrown the football in the big leagues so far.

“I don’t want to see many of those punts out there,” Cotham said, smiling.