Author: Scott Lauber

So, you say you want to get to know Andrew Painter better?

Ask him about pickleball.

No, wait, not just about the paddle game, which the Phillies‘ best pitching prospect in 20 years enjoys playing after offseason workouts in South Florida. Get him to explain his “signature move,” Spencer Stockton teases, and well, how do you not take that bait?

“I had the ‘skyball,’” Painter says.

The skyball?

“I just hit it up real high,” Painter continues, leaving out the part about yelling “Skyball” at the top of his lungs. “You can ask [Jesús] Luzardo about it. He never returned it. It wasn’t always in. No one ever figured out how to hit it. It was out of bounds most of the time.”

A trick serve that borders on the absurd and has little chance of actually landing inside the lines? It’s goofy. And quintessentially Painter, scheduled to make the most highly anticipated major-league debut by a Phillies pitcher since Cole Hamels on Tuesday night at home against the Nationals.

He goes by Andrew on the mound but Andy around friends and peers, most of whom describe him with a common adjective: “happy-go-lucky.” That characterization applied even last October, according to Stockton, who didn’t know what to expect when Painter walked back into Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., where many major-league pitchers train in the offseason.

Phillies fans have heard about Painter for years, since he dominated three levels of the minor leagues in 2022. In 2023, at age 19, he was competing in spring training for a rotation spot — and probably would’ve made the team — when he tore a ligament in his elbow. Rest and rehab didn’t work. He had surgery four months later.

It was 15 months before Painter would pitch in a game. And after he overpowered hitters for six weeks in 2024 in the Arizona Fall League, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, who likened Painter before surgery to Justin Verlander, infamously said the 6-foot-7 righty might be ready for the majors by last “July-ish.”

But Painter struggled in his first exposure to triple A. Like most pitchers who are returning from Tommy John surgery, his fastball command came and went. His arm angle dipped. He made 22 triple-A starts, not missing any, but posted a 5.40 ERA.

“July-ish” turned into, well, nothing. Painter made his final triple-A start on Sept. 17 and went home once the season ended.

Stockton, a former minor-league pitcher with the Reds and now a coach at Cressey, didn’t know what frame of mind his former pickleball partner would be in when he got there.

“I expected him to be maybe a little morose about what had happened,” Stockton said by phone. “I assumed he was probably going to be a little disappointed. But it was kind of the opposite. He was very driven and very realistic about what happened.”

And now, at last, Painter is ready for his close-up.

When he finally takes the mound in Citizens Bank Park, it will be 1,126 days since Painter’s ill-fated spring-training start in 2023 and 980 since his surgery — and 10 days shy of his 23rd birthday. Painter will still be the youngest pitcher to start a game for the Phillies since Ranger Suárez on Aug. 16, 2018.

Maybe some of the prospect shine has dulled since Baseball America named Painter as the best pitcher in the minors in 2022. But the expectations are every bit as grand as ever.

“I’ve always followed him because he’s a friend of the family,” said former Phillies manager Joe Girardi, whose son, Dante, played with Painter in high school. “Andrew went through somewhat of a traumatic experience, where he had to rehab his elbow and deal with a lot. It’s great to see him back. We’re pulling for him.”

The rise

Painter pitched in high school at Calvary Christian Academy, a powerhouse program in Fort Lauderdale. As a freshman, he was the No. 4 starter in a rotation that included future Mets right-hander Christian Scott.

It wasn’t long before Painter moved up the ranks.

The talent was overwhelming. Girardi recalled attending a tournament at USA Baseball’s headquarters in Cary, N.C., in 2018. Painter faced a team from Mississippi and took a perfect game into the sixth inning.

“I looked at [his wife] Kim, and I said, ‘There’s a first-round pick in waiting,’” Girardi said by phone. “It was 90 mph; four pitches. He could command them all. He was thin. He hadn’t filled out yet. But there was just so much potential there. You could just see that he was going to be special.”

Yet Painter seemed unfazed by it all. He took baseball seriously, especially while he was on the mound. But around friends and teammates, he didn’t take himself seriously.

To wit: Painter, who towered over most teammates, walked into the high-profile National High School Invitational in North Carolina with a Kermit the Frog backpack slung over his shoulders, former Calvary Christian coach Alan Kunkel recalled.

Girardi remembered Painter begging the coaches to let him hit in batting practice. He shagged fly balls in the outfield with such zeal that Girardi would utter, “Please don’t get hurt.”

“You saw Andy’s comedic side early,” Kunkel said by phone. “Andy’s always been pretty low-key and shy and just kind of quirky and very funny, very witty. But he’s never wanted to be the guy that’s drawing all the attention.”

Indeed, Painter will talk forever about college football (he’s a Florida Gators fan) or video games, or his adventures in posting up Max Scherzer in a pickup basketball game after workouts at Cressey. He just isn’t about to post his pitching clips on Instagram.

Never mind that he was well-known in the South Florida high school baseball world. Luzardo, a prospect in the Nationals’ farm system at the time, heard of Painter and recalls watching him in high school. People would inevitably notice him — “It’s not like you can miss him, man, at 6-6, 6-7,” Kunkel said — but not because he drew attention to himself.

“We live in a very vain time where, man, it’s hard to find supercompetitive kids that are willing to just grind and put in the time and not care who gets credit for it,” Kunkel said. “Andy is one of those kids. Andy has never cared about the vanity of the sport, or cared about being posterized or put on social media. He’s just wanted to be a big leaguer and just continue to compete.”

At times, Kunkel said Painter’s laid-back demeanor would create the wrong impression. Pro scouts often asked about his competitiveness. Kunkel was there to offer reassurance.

“He’s no more, no less of a competitor than the most competitive kid that I’ve ever coached,” Kunkel said. “I always said he’s got the heart rate to be a surgeon or to be a big league pitcher. Ninth inning, World Series moment, I don’t know that that would bother him any more than having to perform heart surgery on somebody for people who have the talent and drive to do that.”

The Phillies got several up-close looks at Painter in high school. In addition to area scout Victor Gomez, who attended almost all of Painter’s starts in a 12-month span leading up to the draft, amateur scouting director Brian Barber saw him pitch five times in the summer of 2020 and twice in the spring of ‘21.

Oh, and they had plenty of inside information on Painter. Girardi was managing the Phillies in 2021. Brian Kaplan, whom the Phillies hired after the 2021 season as director of pitching development, coached Painter at Cressey Sports.

The only question, it seemed, was whether Painter would still be on the board when the Phillies made the 13th overall pick.

“I do remember going into that morning [of the draft] thinking, if you had me guess on who we were going to take, it was going to be Andy Painter,” Barber said. “I thought he had a chance to get there, and I knew if he was going to get there, we were going to take him.”

It was the second consecutive year that the Phillies drafted a high school pitcher in the first round. On Aug. 6, 2022, Mick Abel and Painter started back-to-back in an A-ball doubleheader in Lakewood, N.J. Abel allowed three hits and three walks and struck out eight in six scoreless innings. Painter one-upped him across the board: two hits, one walk, 11 strikeouts in seven scoreless innings.

“The guy is just an alien,” Abel said a few days later. “He’s awesome.”

The return

Imagine being 19 years old and “on a rocket ship to what looked like superstardom,” as Barber put it. Now imagine having it taken away.

How would you cope?

Painter became a grillmaster.

“He kind of ventured off and learned how to cook and enjoyed testing out new types of meats and things of that nature,” Kunkel said. “My man was researching seasonings; he was researching meat types. He’s very proud of his cooking arsenal right now.”

Last season left a sour taste in Painter’s mouth. He got through it healthy, which was the most important part. And there were restrictions. For example, he wasn’t allowed to long-toss from beyond 120 feet.

But upon returning to South Florida, Painter was energized by the idea of a normal offseason. He got together with Stockton and Phillies assistant pitching coach Mark Lowy, who previously worked at Cressey Sports, to dig in on why triple-A hitters slugged .585 against his fastball last season.

Among their discoveries: Painter’s arm slot dipped from its presurgery position, which impacted the shape of his heater. The Phillies identified the issue during the season but were cautious among making changes in a competitive environment.

“He got into some subpar throwing positions, but he was athletic enough to still throw 100,” Stockton said. “When things go wrong and you’ve never struggled, you start to throw things at the wall that maybe aren’t necessarily the best things for you. I think that’s kind of what he ran into last year, and it was like, ‘Well, how do I fix it?’”

Start by long-tossing from greater distances. There were other drills, too. Stockton gave Painter a red, 6-pound ball and had him throw it as hard as he could from the mound, then do the same with a regular ball. As the shape of his fastball returned, the usual movement came back, too.

Painter and Luzardo worked out together six days a week with Stockton beginning in November. Painter worked on his changeup, which he threw a lot, especially to righties, in spring training. He worked on separating his sweeper from his traditional slider. He also lost about 15 pounds to get back to 225.

But Stockton noticed something else about Painter.

“He was just very motivated to get going from Day 1,” he said. “It’s a testament to how far he’s come. When he was 18-19, even when he was in high school and we were all training together, as you would expect from a kid that throws 100 in high school, he was a little immature. But that was only four years ago, and he’s leaps and bounds ahead of that.

“It helps him for the future. Is he going to be a Cy Young [winner] this year, or even Rookie of the Year? Chances are, he probably won’t. But when you can get some of these things out of the way at 22-23, those shortcomings that you have early on when you’re supposed to be the guy, it helps the career arc a little bit.”

Surely, they squeezed in some time for pickleball, too. The “skyball” doesn’t get better without practice.

But everything will come into focus Tuesday night. Painter’s parents and new fiancée (he got engaged last month) will be there. Kunkel, who now coaches at a high school in Orlando, is even skipping a game — “The first game I’ve ever missed as a high school coach, man,” he said — to be there with his wife and daughters.

Maybe even Hamels, who works for the Phillies, will be in attendance.

“Sometimes with young pitchers, you worry about them trying to do too much, and it can manifest itself with a lack of control or getting hurt,” Girardi said. “I think he learned from that experience, and I think he’s going be better for it, and I think he’s prepared for what’s coming up.”