Sometimes when a 19-year-old prospect is invited to Major League Spring Training for the first time, it’s pretty well understood that said player is there to get some jitters out of the way and give the coaching staff a full view of his arsenal, even though making the big league team is pretty unlikely.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with RHP Andrew Painter.
Philadelphia Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski hinted as far back as last summer that Painter — among other exciting pitching prospects — would likely be at Spring Training with the big club in 2023.
With less than a month until pitchers and catchers report to Clearwater, it sounds as though the Phillies are preparing for the possibility that the former first-round pick is so impressive in Spring Training that he earns the final spot in the rotation for the defending National League Champions.
“Well, I’m not very good at percentages and all of that, but I think he has a realistic chance [of making the Opening Day roster],” Dombrowski said Thursday to Joe DeCamera and Jon Ritchie on SportsRadio 94 WIP.
“He’s a very, very talented individual. But, it’s not given by any means. … I’ve been associated and been fortunate to be with some really good, young, talented pitchers coming out of the draft like him, and they’ve made the club and been very, very productive big league pitchers.
“… He has four pitches already and they are above-average, three of them at least. He does the little things well, which is very unusual. He fields his position well … he’s quick to the plate … he’s very athletic. A lot of it will be dependent upon how he handles it in Spring Training, but I think he’s got a reasonable chance to make the big league club.”
As Dombrowski alluded to, he has quite the history with promoting young pitchers to the majors.
Dombrowski and the Florida Marlins selected Josh Beckett with the No. 2 overall pick in the 1999 MLB Draft and he made his Major League Debut in September of 2001, when he was 21. Two years later — after Dombrowski had departed the organization — Beckett won World Series MVP, as the Fish upset the New York Yankees in the 2003 Fall Classic.
The Detroit Tigers, under Dombrowski’s leadership, used the second pick in the 2004 MLB Draft on Justin Verlander and he made two starts for the team in 2005, when he was 22 years old. While Verlander was relatively underwhelming in his first two big league appearances, he would take home the American League Rookie of the Year Award in 2006, helping the Tigers to make a shocking run to the World Series.
Comparing Painter — who will still be a teenager during the first week of the 2023 season — to either Beckett or Verlander almost feels unfair. But earlier this week, MLB Pipeline ranked him as the top right-handed pitching prospect in baseball. Baseball America ranked Painter as the No. 5 overall prospect in the sport earlier this week.
Phillies fans may be hesitant to fully invest in Painter considering the only two elite starting pitchers that the franchise has developed internally over the past 15 years are Cole Hamels and Aaron Nola, but it’s fair to start imaging what could be in this case. Certainly, Phillies brass seems to be doing so.
For his part, manager Rob Thomson is aware that Painter threw just 103 2/3 innings across three levels of the minor leagues in 2022, but there doesn’t seem to be a Spencer Howard-type plan to have him operate on a different schedule than other starting pitchers. Perhaps Thomson getting to watch the disastrous outcome the well-intended plan had on Howard mentally — and perhaps physically — in 2021 has given the Phillies a blueprint for how not to handle Painter.
“Well, we gotta build him up as a starter. If he breaks camp with us, he needs to pitch, and he needs to have a pretty good pitch count to do that so that we’re not putting a toll on the bullpen,” Thomson said in a media session Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park. “We’ll ramp him up probably pretty normally.”
Earlier this offseason, Phillies Nation‘s Nathan Ackerman examined the possibility of the team utilizing a six-man rotation to open the 2023 season. Normally, such an idea can be a bit silly, but for the Phillies, it may actually make some sense.
For as much excitement as there is about Painter, the Phillies do have to be careful to monitor his innings increase year over year. Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Ranger Suárez all had large workloads during last year’s World Series run. The Phillies liked Taijuan Walker enough to give him a four-year/$72 million deal this winter, but he has a history of hitting a wall after the All-Star Break. For a team that hopes to play well into October, would a six-man rotation make sense, especially if you want to be able to utilize Painter’s arm for the entirety of the season?
“Yeah, there’s always potential for that,” Thomson acknowledged. “And even if it’s not at the start of the season, I’m sure we’ll go to a six-man at some point for a period of time, and maybe a couple of times over the course of the year just to give those guys maybe an extra day or an extra couple of days.”
The Phillies should have enough arms internally if they choose to have a starter occasionally skip a turn through the rotation, or just use six pitchers during some periods of the season.
Bailey Falter and Cristopher Sánchez ate innings for the Phillies in 2022, with the former going 6-2 with a 3.38 ERA in 11 starts after the All-Star Break. As the season goes on, the organization’s two other top pitching prospects — Mick Abel and Griff McGarry — could earn big league opportunities as well.
It’s possible that Falter will be the No. 5 starter at the beginning of the season, keeping the seat warm for Painter. After all, Painter has never thrown a pitch at the Triple-A level. He could lead a star-studded rotation for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs at the outset of 2023, and come up later in the season, just like Abel and McGarry.
But the presence of someone like Falter — who is comfortable with making spot starts, and wearing out an E-ZPass going back and fourth between Philadelphia and Lehigh Valley — may be what allows the Phillies to have Painter in their rotation for all of 2023 without overworking him.
Whether or not Painter makes the Opening Day roster will be the biggest storyline for the Phillies during Spring Training. And the organization doesn’t seem to believe that expectations need to be lowered for the 19-year-old.
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