It was just the other day when Don Mattingly talked about how Andrew Painter simply “let him pitch, develop, and work on his mechanics without major league pressure.”
In about a month with Lehigh Valley, Painter has worked on various mechanical and mental fixes with the staff there. The result has been a lower walk rate and increased velocity. Manager Tank Adamson has also noted a different attitude than he has seen in the past with Painter.
“I think you can tell just in how he carries himself, he’s holding his head a little higher and just seems more assured of what he is doing,” said Adamson. “I think it’s really easy for him to put an overly large amount of stock into just the results. But I think as he goes, he’s understanding the extreme importance of the day-to-day and just every time he picks up a baseball that it’s with a purpose. I think that is part of the development as a whole and a really important piece, but hopefully that’s starting to be a bit more of the norm for him in terms of not setting an unrealistic, high bar.”
Hitting rock bottom
Painter’s recent stint with Lehigh Valley started with a pair of decent outings (10 IP, 1.80 ERA) and whatever he was doing seemed to be working. Then, he went out to face the Columbus Clippers and got his proverbial butt handed to him. 2.2 IP, 8 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 1 HR, 4 BB, 1 K, 70 pitches/38 strikes.
Perhaps that was the real starting point for Painter. He went back and watched the painful video. Clippers’ hitters batted .538 against his fastball in that outing. The natural question is what was wrong with his fastball? It was kind of like a trip to the doctor when you have leg pain and he tells you it’s not your leg, it’s your back causing the pain in your leg. In this case, it wasn’t the fastball; it was everything else that was causing the pain.
His sweeper and change-up were consistently out of the zone and his slider – his chase pitch – was supposed to be low and out of the zone, which it was. The hitters didn’t worry about anything other than the fastball because they knew the rest was junk. When they saw fastball, their eyes lit up and they went after it. It was an eye-opener for the 23-year-old. Perhaps the best part of the revelation was that nobody told him that was the problem. He saw it was the problem, helping him to take it even more to heart.
Even more importantly, the outing didn’t show up on ESPN or Baseball Tonight, because it was at Triple-A and few people other than IronPigs fans cared. That gave him the opportunity to work on what he saw and the result was a different pitcher. In two starts since then, Painter threw 11 innings in two starts and struck out 14 batters while walking just one. He allowed three earned runs in the outings for a 2.54 ERA in the small sample size of two games.
A change of direction, and plans
It seemed to all the world that Painter would be making his scheduled Friday night start with Lehigh Valley and that Brian Keller or Tim Mayza would get the start in Baltimore. Keller pitched three good innings in his MLB debut and the Phillies were prepared to go with him as their “bulk” guy again until they started to rething things.
During an off-day on Thursday, the Phillies discussed the options for Friday night. They discussed the improved metrics for Painter in his last two starts and also went over notes from Adamson and Lehigh Valley pitching coach Phil Cundari about the behind the scenes information on Painter.
Finally, they decided that Painter, who would be pitching on his usual day, would be the best option for the Phillies to win the series opener in Baltimore and made the call. The logistics worked well. The Phillies are in Baltimore and Lehigh Valley is at home, leaving a relatively short trip for Painter to make it to Baltimore to make the start.
To clear room for Painter, the Phillies optioned Keller back to Lehigh Valley.
Now, all that’s needed is for Painter to be able to put it all together at the major league level.
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