Don’t forget about Mick Abel, the other half of the Phillies’ best pitching prospect duo in 20 years

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Mick Abel is 6-foot-5; Andrew Painter is 6-7. Abel got drafted 15th overall in 2020; Painter was the 13th overall pick in 2021. Abel’s fastball averages 95 mph; Painter’s 96. Oh, and Abel is the 12th-best pitching prospect in the sport, according to Baseball America; Painter is No. 1.

Good thing Abel isn’t the jealous sort.

For nearly every other team in baseball, Abel’s presence in major-league camp would be a spring-training spotlight-stealer. With the Phillies, it’s more of a footnote. All anyone around here can talk about is Painter, the right-handed wunderkind who entered camp with a serious chance of becoming the first 19-year-old pitcher to start for the team since Mark Davis in 1980 and the first to make the opening-day roster since Larry Christenson in 1973.

“He’s an alien,” Abel said, chortling. “He’s that good. He’s a specimen.”

» READ MORE: The education of Phillies phenom Andrew Painter included workouts (and hoops) with Max Scherzer

What, then, does that make Abel? E.T. didn’t have an otherworldly sidekick, but the Phillies believe Abel possesses superhuman pitching powers all his own. They moved him up to double A before his 21st birthday last summer, and he finished out the season with a 3.52 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 23 innings as one of the youngest players in the Eastern League. In 37 minor league starts overall, he has a 4.06 ERA and 196 strikeouts in 153 innings.

Abel is right-handed and baby-faced, rail-thin and uber-talented, analytically inclined and studious. Most of all, he’s emotionally mature. He’s progressing at an acceptable rate, just not with the Autobahn speed that has Painter dressing at a spring-training locker beside Zack Wheeler and near Aaron Nola. Meanwhile, Abel is situated on the other side of the clubhouse among the minor leaguers with offensive linemen’s uniform numbers.

But he isn’t resentful of being the second banana in the Phillies’ best pitching prospect tandem since Cole Hamels and Gavin Floyd almost 20 years ago. Far from it.

“[Painter] is my guy, on and off the field,” said Abel, who is living with Painter and hard-throwing right-hander Griff McGarry. “In many ways, when he first signed, I showed him some of the ropes, and now he’s showing me some of the ropes. I’d say it’s a pretty even relationship in that sense. He’s still one of my best friends. Nothing’s really changed.”

Kevin Gunderson got that sense when Abel returned home to Oregon after last season. A former minor league pitcher with the Braves, Gunderson, 38, has coached Abel for seven years and knows him as well as almost anybody. He characterizes Abel as a self-motivated perfectionist who is rarely satisfied with the shape or movement of a pitch.

So, Abel didn’t need the comparisons to Painter — an unavoidable if slightly unfair measuring stick given their similar backgrounds as high school right-handers who were drafted in the first round and nearly identical five-pitch repertoires — to fuel his offseason work at Gunderson’s pitching academy in suburban Portland.

“This game can breed a ton of selfishness and ‘I’ people, but talking to him [this week], he’s extremely happy for Painter,” Gunderson said by phone this week. “That’s just the type of kid Mick is. He talks about how good friends him and Painter are. I think Mick is excited for all of the praise and all the attention that Andrew is getting because it’s 100% deserved. But Mick also knows, if he takes care of business, he has a chance to get there as well.”

» READ MORE: Ace … and mentor? Phillies’ Zack Wheeler will be there for his new locker neighbor Andrew Painter

If Abel isn’t in the majors later this season, it will largely be because the pandemic caused the cancellation of his senior season in high school in 2020 and delayed the first few months of his minor league development. It also probably contributed to shoulder tendinitis that sidelined him for the final six weeks of the 2021 season.

It took time, but Abel has finally caught up. The Phillies built his workload gradually. After 44⅔ innings at low-A Clearwater in 2021, he worked a total of 108⅓ innings last year between high-A Jersey Shore and Reading. As the season wore on, his mindset changed. Rather than focusing on what Phillies farm director Preston Mattingly calls “training mode,” Abel concentrated more on competing at an elite level on the mound, including how best to use his secondary pitches.

Like Painter, Abel could dominate A-ball hitters with little more than his blazing fastball. But the development and deployment of offspeed stuff is central to having success against more advanced competition. Abel’s slider is his most advanced breaking pitch. But he added a variation that includes more sweeping action. The Phillies also worked on refining his curveball, which Abel said “has turned into another out-pitch for me.”

Abel also dabbles with a changeup, and it isn’t a coincidence that he recently started playing catch with a cutter, a pitch that Painter picked up over the winter.

“It’s about getting Mick to use his entire mix,” Mattingly said. “Obviously he has the big fastball, velocity-wise. You have to be able to land secondary pitches and have multiple weapons and variations of those pitches to get guys out.”

Abel is still learning how to unleash them. Gunderson tried to help improve his understanding of all his pitches. It didn’t hurt that Abel threw bullpen sessions to Baltimore Orioles star catcher Adley Rutschman, a fellow Oregonian and runner-up to Seattle’s Julio Rodríguez for AL rookie of the year.

“Mick doesn’t settle for just being average with those different pitches, and that comes with, at times, tinkering a little bit too much, being a little bit nitpicky, and almost painting this perfect picture as far as how those pitches should be,” Gunderson said. “Throwing bullpens to Adley, that’s huge for him. Because Adley is able to give him feedback from a catching standpoint and from an offense standpoint that, you may not think a pitch is good, but that pitch is really, really good.”

» READ MORE: Inside the training routine that makes the Phillies’ Aaron Nola baseball’s most durable pitcher

Abel also went to work in the offseason on fine-tuning his command. He walked 50 of 471 batters last season, a 10.6% rate that Gunderson believes can be reduced if Abel is more aggressive when he’s ahead in the count.

“We walked through the numbers, and I said, ‘How many of those 50 walks did you have the hitter in your hands?’” Gunderson said. “And he was like, ‘I probably had 20 to 25 where I had them in 0-2 counts.’ If he eliminates 20 of those walks and 10 of those 20 he converts to strikeouts, that’s a 140-strikeout-to-30-walk ratio. The numbers change quick.

“I felt like he left for spring training this year the best I’ve ever seen him, the most consistent I’ve ever seen him. As that command comes — and it’s in there — that’s the last piece to the puzzle. I think he has all the makings to be able to pitch successfully in Philadelphia. I really do.”

There will be an opportunity. Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has always been unafraid of committing to young pitchers. When he ran the Tigers, Jeremy Bonderman and Rick Porcello made their major-league debuts at age 20 and Justin Verlander at 22. Painter appears to be next.

It would be the ultimate example of his one-upmanship of Abel. The most glaring came last Aug. 6. Abel allowed three hits with eight strikeouts in six scoreless innings in the opener of a doubleheader for Jersey Shore. Painter started the finale and gave up two hits with 11 strikeouts in seven scoreless innings.

“Both of us kind of inspire each other,” Abel said. “We’re pushing each other in bullpens, we’re pushing each other when we’re playing catch. He’s an awesome guy. There’s definitely a healthy competition there.”

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And it isn’t over yet.

“It sounds like Mick is very at peace on where he is right now,” Gunderson said. “I think he has a goal in mind. I think he is in a really good mental space that he’s focused in on what he needs to do to be able to garner that same attention that Painter has.”