Inside the offseason work preparing Phillies phenom Andrew Painter: ‘He might be pitching in October’

Eric Cressey met Andrew Painter when he was 15 years old. Back then, the future Phillies pitching prospect was a “high school kid who would hang out with pro guys,” in Cressey’s words. And at Cressey Sports Performance in South Florida, Painter had plenty of pro guys to choose from. The trainer counts Mets pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer as well as veteran major league pitcher Michael Wacha as clients. Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and new Phillies shortstop Trea Turner can often be seen hitting in his batting cages.

But over the past year, Cressey has seen something different in Painter, the 13th overall pick of the 2021 draft. The 19-year-old pitcher is coming off a dominant minor league season, in which he jumped three levels and posted a 1.56 ERA in 103⅔ innings with 155 strikeouts. But he has also developed a degree of self-awareness that Cressey deems unusual in a pitcher so young.

» READ MORE: Andrew Painter among 21 nonroster players invited to Phillies spring training

“He left as a teenager and returned as an adult,” Cressey said. “He’s part of the pro crowd now.”

Painter works hard. His season ended in mid-September, and he was back in Cressey’s gym later that month. But more importantly, he works smart. After being voted the top pitching prospect in baseball in a poll of general managers, farm directors, scouting directors, and analytics specialists, he knows he has a good thing going. He doesn’t need to overthink, or tinker, or try to light up a radar gun in his first bullpen session of spring training. And for the Phillies’ purposes, the fact that he’s not succumbing to that pressure is a very good thing.

There’s a real chance Painter could earn a spot in the starting rotation out of spring training. If he does break camp with the Phillies, he’ll embark on his first full major league season with just 109⅔ minor league innings. There isn’t much precedent for that, so Cressey has been monitoring Painter’s workload closely.

“I think the tendency nowadays for a lot of young pitchers in this game is to always be working on something,” Cressey said. “There’s a time for doing that when you’re a 19th-rounder who needs to develop a new pitch. But if you’re the minor league baseball pitcher of the year, the offering is already pretty refined.

“So, what we’ve done is we’ve had a little bit of a slower on-ramp with his throwing program. We gave him time to recharge to get his body where it needed to be. We started getting him going in mid-November with his catch play. He’s shifting to two bullpens a week starting this week. It’s one of those things where it hasn’t been like force-force-force but very specific stuff. We’ve been giving him a chance to build up his work capacity knowing that there’s a good chance he might be pitching in October.”

While Painter has tried not to do too much, throwing hard comes naturally to him. He has already hit 95 mph-plus in his bullpen sessions, according to Cressey. They’d like to have him throw seven or eight more sessions there by the time he reports to Clearwater, Fla., for big-league spring training on Feb. 16.

He’s taking the same approach in the weight room; working hard, but also working smart. When he returned to Cressey’s facility in late September, they had a conversation about Painter’s ideal weight. He put on some muscle during the season, with the thought that filling out his 6-foot-7 frame would be a good thing, but it didn’t feel right. They settled on 220-225 pounds as his ideal weight.

“He understands where he wants his body weight to be, which is a very mature perception at his age,” Cressey said. “So many guys spend a career trying to figure out what it should be. And he actually prefers to be just a little bit lighter and more athletic, and that helps him to work best. He still carries a pretty good amount of muscle mass in his lower half. He’s just a long build.

» READ MORE: Phillies prospect rankings: Farm system is heavy on impact pitching, lacking major league-ready bats

“But I thought that was like a very mature discovery for him to come back and say, you know, ‘I don’t want to be 240 pounds. That’s just not who I am.’”

Painter knows he doesn’t have it all figured out. Working out at Cressey’s gym can provide a dose of humility, whether you’re looking for it or not. He walks into the gym every morning and sees 10 All-Stars, six Cy Young Award winners, and a few MVPs. But he’s learning from some of the best, and before long, he might have a couple of accolades to his name, too.