Andrew Painter’s injury diagnosis means the Phillies should forget about him in 2023

The best thing for everybody right now is to forget about the prospect of Andrew Painter in the big leagues. That goes for Phillies fans and players alike. It goes for Rob Thomson and Dave Dombrowski. It even goes for Painter himself. Any innings he sees this season are a bonus. That’s the operating principle.

The good news about being diagnosed with a UCL sprain at the age of 19 is that you have a lot of time to heal. Right now, the big question is how much of it Painter will need. Four weeks can easily become four months or even four times that when elbows are involved. The prognosis the Phillies announced on Friday regarding their top pitching prospect was open-ended by design. All we know is that Painter will take four weeks off and then begin a light throwing program. That’s all the Phillies know, too.

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This is how it typically goes with an injury to a pitcher’s ulnar collateral ligament. Catch it early enough, and the thing can heal on its own. But healing is a relative thing, particularly for a joint that needs to withstand the force of repeatedly throwing an object overhand at high rates of speed. At some point, the only way to find out is by doing. And, at that point, the doing can just as easily make the thing even worse.

So we wait. Even in a best-case scenario, it’s difficult to imagine Painter getting back on a mound in a competitive game until sometime in May. Four weeks without throwing at this stage of spring training is a long enough time to force even a veteran arm to start the whole thing over. That usually means a period of light tossing, followed by a series of long-toss sessions at increasing intervals of distance and intensity, followed by a week or two of bullpen sessions, followed by a month or so of pitching once every five days. Already, we’re so far into the future that the future isn’t worth projecting. You can’t rush this stuff at any age, let alone at 19.

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Again, that’s the best-case scenario, which is something of an oxymoron. After all, a ligament that has healed is still the same ligament that was injured in the first place. There are only so many variables you can change when attempting to prevent a repeat outcome. Mechanics, load managements, etc. But the biggest determinants are the fundamentals of the job: the physiology of an individual’s arm, and the act of throwing a ball hard.

The worst-case outcome? It isn’t Tommy John surgery. That may not be ideal, but it’s much closer to a rite of passage than it is a significant career obstacle. Much worse is for Painter’s elbow problems to linger. Jacob deGrom, who had Tommy John surgery in 2010 after 26 innings in rookie ball and sat out 2011, missed the last three months of the 2021 season after being diagnosed with a UCL sprain. He did not return to the mound until August of the following season, thanks to a shoulder injury that developed during his return from the elbow. Last month, deGrom was held out of his first workout with the Texas Rangers as the result of forearm tightness. In 2019, Chris Sale suffered a UCL injury in August and eventually needed surgery the following March.

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For Painter and the Phillies, the future is a far more important consideration than the present. The goal can no longer be to have him in the rotation this season. Rather, the goal is to have him right whenever he gets there.

Both parties are fortunate to have Scott Boras involved in the process. Painter’s agent has taken a lot of heat over the years, but there’s nobody in the world you’d rather have as a partner in attempting to chart the optimal long-term course for a player. He is a fierce advocate for his players, one who has invested plenty of resources in the study of performance and longevity.

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“I have extensive studies on young pitchers with extreme velocity at young ages,” Boras said. “Andrew is aware and understands his development requires great attention and patience so his rare skill extends throughout a long MLB career.”

It’s a reality the Phillies were going to need to confront even if Painter broke camp with the team. To a certain degree, anything they got from him this season was best viewed as a value-add. Whatever happens four weeks from now, they should continue to operate as if they will be without it.