‘Unreal’ double feature: Mick Abel and Andrew Painter offer glimpse of what could be for Phillies

A rainout meant a doubleheader showcasing the Phillies' top pitching prospects, and the duo lived up to the hype.

Phillies pitching prospects Andrew Painter, left, and Mick Abel before spring training in February.Read moreFILE PHOTO

Published Aug. 9, 2022, 5:27 p.m. ET

Mick Abel woke up last Friday and checked the weather. The forecast called for a chance of thunderstorms late in the afternoon and into the evening in Lakewood, N.J. And that’s when the soon-to-be 21-year-old began to think more like a boxing promoter than a touted Phillies minor-league pitcher.

Abel was scheduled to start that night for high-A Jersey Shore. But rain would mean a doubleheader Saturday, which would mean Abel and fellow top prospect Andrew Painter starting on the same day.

“I wasn’t hoping for a rainout,” Abel said by phone Tuesday, “but I was also kind of like everybody else, just thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what if we went back-to-back? Two seven-inning games. That would be so awesome.’ Lo and behold, we get rained out. It was almost like, ‘OK, it’s happening.’ It made it a special day for me.”

Imagine Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom starting a doubleheader in a 6,588-seat ballpark in the Mets’ farm system in 2013 — before they were Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom.

Now imagine it actually lived up to the hype.

Abel went first, allowing three hits and three walks and striking out eight in six scoreless innings of an 8-2 win over the Hudson Valley Renegades, a Yankees affiliate that featured slugging prospect Jasson Dominguez. Then, Painter one-upped him in almost every category: two hits, one walk, 11 strikeouts in a seven-inning, 2-0 shutout.

“It was unreal,” Abel said.

Consider it Exhibits A and 1A of why Dave Dombrowski hung up the phone every time he got asked about deals involving Abel and Painter before the trade deadline.

“We’re slowly building this culture of hopefully a pitching factory from the top down, and those two are kind of our cornerstones,” Phillies minor league pitching coordinator Travis Hergert said of the right-handers. “They push each other, they help each other. And then to be able to take it out on the field and have this friendly competition, they were awesome.”

Abel, the 15th overall pick in the 2020 draft, has a 3.64 ERA and 102 strikeouts in 84 innings over 17 starts at Jersey Shore. He’s 6-foot-5, throws a 97-98 mph fastball, and takes an uncommonly analytical approach to his development. Baseball America ranks him 66th among its top 100 prospects, and given how he has pitched since the All-Star break (12 scoreless innings, 18 strikeouts), he may be climbing the chart.

Painter, the 13th overall pick last year, has a 1.32 ERA and 109 strikeouts in 68⅓ innings over 16 starts between low-A Clearwater and Jersey Shore. He’s 19 years old, 6-7, throws a 98-99 mph heater, and is what Hergert calls “a happy-go-lucky, kind of goofball.” Baseball America ranks him 33rd among its top 100, but that was before he posted a 1.40 ERA in his first nine starts after getting promoted to high-A.

Abel said he was pleased with his outing against Hudson Valley apart from a few long at-bats that hiked his pitch count to 93 and prevented him from going out for the seventh inning. After the game, he said he thought to himself, “‘Paint’ will get through seven scoreless innings. Should be easy.”

Sure enough, when Abel finished his arm-care treatment and joined the team in the dugout for the second game, Painter was on cruise control.

“I came back down and I’m like, ‘OK, should be the top of the second,’” Abel said. “It was the top of the third, and I’m like, ‘What?’ I think he got through the first two innings on 13 or 14 pitches with a couple punchies [strikeouts] and a couple first-pitch-swinging outs. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh.’

“He’s my guy, on and off the field. It’s just like some of my best friends back home. We’ll be chilling in the hotel, just hanging out, playing video games, doing whatever. We’re constantly spending time together. There’s definitely a healthy competition there. Both of us kind of inspire each other to have good outings. I couldn’t be happier to have him up here with me.”

Painter gave up a two-out hit in the third inning and a one-out single in the fourth. He worked around a one-out walk and a two-out error in the fifth and finished off the game in 79 pitches.

As Hergert said, “Andy ended the game just yawning. He made it look pretty easy.”

It marked the first time in 20 pro starts that Painter finished the seventh inning. Abel has gotten into the seventh twice without completing it, while averaging 94 pitches per start and twice throwing more than 100.

That’s all part of the development process. In organizational meetings last October, Dombrowski stressed the importance of training starters to go deep in games when they’re in the minor leagues. He wants to build up their workloads substantially but also responsibly, without pushing them to a breaking point.

So, the Phillies changed the schedule for their A-ball starters this season. Rather than pitching them on five-day routines, they’ve given them one start per week, similar to a college schedule. Abel starts Friday nights in Jersey Shore; Painter starts Saturdays. In between, they have three weight-lifting sessions.

“Now,” Hergert said, “our expectation is they go six or seven.”

Abel has piled up 84 innings, with a built-in two-week respite around the All-Star break. Painter got a nearly three-week breather in June after getting called up to Jersey Shore. He has worked back up to consecutive starts of six and seven innings with 82 and 79 pitches, respectively, and thrown a total of 68⅓ innings.

And when Painter finished off the game Saturday night, it was a proud moment for an organization that hasn’t had many scouting and player-development triumphs in the last 10 years. Hergert said text messages were flying back and forth among staff members.

“It was just an experience like no other to have us two going the same day,” Abel said. “We kind of knew it was going to be a bad day for the Renegades.”