‘A valuable experience’: Inside Andrew Painter’s road back to the Phillies

Rehabbing from a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow is a "gauntlet," according to one of the coaches working with him, who's been through a similar process.

Phillies top pitching prospect Andrew Painter still faces a long recovery process after spraining a ligament in his right elbow in spring training.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published June 3, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

The text messages fly back and forth every few days. Occasionally, like Thursday morning, they turn into a phone call. Sometimes the topic is baseball. Mostly, though, it’s about life. How’s the family? How’s the dog? You get the idea.

“Just being a friend,” Brian Kaplan said the other day. “Just being there for him.”

Kaplan met Andrew Painter six years ago and has watched him grow from a precocious 14-year-old with lightning in his right arm into the No. 1 pitching prospect in the minor leagues, based on Baseball America’s preseason rankings. He has been alongside Painter nearly every step of the way, since the day the kid and his father walked into Kaplan’s training facility in South Florida.

There’s nobody with the Phillies who knows Painter any better or longer. It means something, then, that Kaplan, like most team officials, remains hopeful that the 20-year-old phenom will pitch this season — and perhaps even make his major league debut. A kiddie pool-deep starting rotation could desperately use him. Maybe he could even be an X-factor down the stretch.

But it’s a long way from here to there. Painter sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow in spring training. He didn’t need surgery, but the recovery process is drawn out. Progress is incremental. Steps cannot be skipped, especially when the health of the most valuable arm in the organization is riding on it.

And it’s all happening at the Phillies’ complex in Clearwater, Fla., out of sight of cameras, away from the spotlight that followed Painter’s every move in spring training right up until the excessive soreness set in one day after a hyped March 1 start against the Minnesota Twins.

Imagine the disappointment. Less than four months ago, Painter’s bid for the Phillies’ fifth-starter job was the story of spring training. His bullpen sessions attracted huge audiences, including owner John Middleton. Now, he has the back fields of the Carpenter Complex largely to himself — that is, when he isn’t bunkered down with the rehab staff, including pitching coordinator Aaron Barrett, a former major league reliever whose comeback from an extreme injury puts him in a unique position to help chart Painter’s course.

It would be only natural for Painter to feel the periodic urge to rush, to push his elbow harder than prescribed, to get back to the doorstep of the major leagues, a place few pitchers his age have been. In the last 20 years, nine pitchers have made at least 10 major-league starts in their age-20 or younger season. The Phillies haven’t had a 20-year-old starter since Mark Davis in 1981.

But Kaplan doesn’t sense impatience from Painter. Quite the opposite, actually.

“As young as he is, I think he’s got a mature look on it,” said Kaplan, who runs the Phillies’ minor league pitching program and doubles as the assistant pitching coach on the major league staff. “He’s not rushing anything. He’s appreciating the process and knowing this is about staying healthy and being a part of this team in the long term. I think he views the unfortunate incident of getting hurt in spring as a valuable experience going forward.

“I think it taught him a valuable lesson.”

Everyone with the Phillies should have learned something from it.

Step by step

Three months since he last pitched in a game, Painter starts his days early.

Like every injured player who comes to the Phillies’ Florida complex, he arrives before breakfast. He meets with rehab coordinator Justin Tallard and physical therapist Brittany Gooch to go through an individualized program tailored to strengthen his elbow. His throwing program varies, from playing catch from 120 feet (up from 30, 60, and 90 at earlier stages of his rehab) to spinning breaking balls or throwing a bullpen session. Thus far, Painter has thrown off the slope of the mound from 55 feet, the precursor to a full-fledged session.

Then, it’s off to see strength coach Dan Liburd, a workout in the weight room, and treatment and recovery in the trainer’s room. Mental performance coach Traci Statler is a resource, too.

“It’s a gauntlet,” Barrett said by phone. “These guys, you come down to rehab, you’re not on vacation. I think Andy’s learning a lot about himself right now. I have no doubt that he’s going to come out of this a better version.”

Barrett, 35, retired last season after a 13-year pro career spent mostly in the Washington Nationals organization. He appeared in 95 major league games, all in relief, and posted a 4.01 ERA and 86 strikeouts in 74 innings. He has a World Series ring.

But Barrett’s greatest triumph came in 2019, when he made it back to the majors after the twin horrors of Tommy John surgery in 2015 and a gruesome broken arm suffered while pitching in a rehab game in Florida. He missed two full seasons, spent half of 2018 in the low minors, and racked up 31 saves in double A in 2019 before finally making it to Washington in September.

“Andy’s never really been hurt before, and obviously he has a tremendous amount of pressure on him because he’s our guy,” Barrett said. “There are always some doubts. Every single guy that comes through rehab will question, ‘Why me?’ And they’re allowed to have those thoughts. That’s completely normal. Andy has not shown any sort of anything. He’s handled it like a star. He’s a big kid, honestly, and he shows up to the yard every day with the energy to get better.”

The Phillies haven’t put a timeline on Painter’s recovery. Bullpen sessions are usually followed by facing live hitters in a batting practice setting, which is followed by simulated games and finally a minor-league assignment, with multiple occurrences of each step.

So, yes, it’s going to be a while.

Barrett has told Painter to measure progress “Friday to Friday.”

“Can we look at it from last Friday to this Friday and say, ‘Did we get better?’” Barrett said. “If the answer is yes, then that’s all that matters. And if we can continue to stack those days up, we’re going to be in a good spot. As simple as that sounds, that’s rehab.”

Taking it slow

When spring training began, many Phillies officials considered Painter the favorite to win the final rotation spot, which the club elected to fill internally. Nobody said it out loud, but everyone could sense it.

Including Painter.

Scott Boras, Painter’s agent, expressed reservations about moving too quickly. In the offseason and again last month, he rattled off a list of pitchers — Madison Bumgarner, Kerry Wood, Fernando Valenzuela, Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Félix Hernández — who got to the majors at 19 or 20 and were either less effective or completely cooked by age 30. Not mentioned: Stephen Strasburg and Steve Avery, Boras clients who also fit as cautionary tales.

“A lot of [young] pitchers can pitch in the big leagues, but their bodies have not arrived even when their arm has,” Boras said last month. “[Painter’s] a great pitcher. He’s got a great arm. Great stuff. He has a bright future. I just don’t want anything to interrupt it.”

Kaplan, co-founder of Cressey Sports Performance, where Painter came to train in 2014, doesn’t think that’s what happened. The Phillies believed, before spring training and now, that Painter has the maturity to handle being in the majors at such an extremely young age.

But there’s also a natural tendency for young players to overdo it when the brass is watching and a job is on the line. In hindsight, Kaplan thinks that may have been the case when Painter faced the Twins in Fort Myers, Fla., and uncorked back-to-back 99-mph heaters to star shortstop Carlos Correa on his fifth and sixth pitches.

“No one blames a 19-year-old for being excited,” Kaplan said. “Some of that excitement turns to anxiousness, and maybe he goes outside of himself a little bit in just the excitement of the potential of being on an opening-day roster.”

Maybe the Phillies could have mitigated some of that overexcitement by not putting an opening-day roster spot on the table at the outset of camp. Then again, Painter probably would’ve been amped up anyway for his first major-league spring-training game.

But there may have been another factor. Painter threw 29 pitches against the Twins. Six were cutters, a pitch he began throwing in the offseason at the Phillies’ suggestion.

“We felt like it was probably a necessary weapon,” Kaplan said, “to have something he can run away to righties, up and in to lefties, and work off the heater if the slider and curveball were moving so much that zone control was a little bit challenging.”

Kaplan noted that Painter had been throwing the cutter in bullpen sessions since November, but conceded that he may have overdone it in his start.

“Probably was a little excited about the pitch and probably used it a little too much as a new toy,” Kaplan said. “But again, that’s a learning experience that you would expect any 19-year-old to deal with. Going forward, I think he’ll find a nice balance to the pitch.”

Boras joked that he hopes Painter “comes back when he’s 22 and his body’s developed.” Everyone expects Painter to arrive sooner than that. In reality, though, after missing most of this season and likely being on an innings limit next year, the training wheels may not come off until 2025.

“We’re going to wait for him to mature a little physically and treat him as a valuable piece of the starting rotation but manage it as responsibly as possible,” Kaplan said. “Make sure that we’re not exposing him to the same workload that we expect [Aaron] Nola or [Zack] Wheeler to go to.

“I do think it’s a rarity that someone comes to the big leagues at 19 or 20 and has a sustainable long-term career. But Andy hopefully is — I think he is — one of a kind. I certainly expect that he can do something that not a lot of people do.”