Brotherhood of the mound: Phillies pitching prospects at Jersey Shore root for one another

Ben Brown keeps three baseball cards tucked above the nameplate over his locker. One is of his high-A Jersey Shore teammate Mick Abel. One is of his former teammate Griff McGarry, who was promoted to double A in early July. One is of his pitching coach, Brad Bergesen. And then there is the card he is waiting on — Andrew Painter’s — who was transferred to the team in Lakewood, N.J., in early June. But that’s coming.

Brown doesn’t have a card. He jokes that he isn’t as “cool” as his teammates. What he means is that he isn’t a highly-touted pitching prospect. You wouldn’t find him in the top-100 prospect rankings that come out every year. He was selected by the Phillies in the 33rd round of the 2017 MLB draft. Abel and Painter were both first-rounders, and McGarry was picked in the fifth round.

Even still, Brown’s teammates are in awe of him. They watch his bullpen sessions with wide eyes as he throws 89-mph curveballs and 90-mph sliders. Abel and Painter look at these pitches and then look at each other, and ask, “How does he do that?”

Part of it is pure strength. But most of it comes from a lesson Brown learned from McGarry last year. They were standing on the grass at Maimonides Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., before a game against the Cyclones. Brown was struggling to throw his slider with confidence, and McGarry gave him some advice.

“Pretend like it’s a fastball the entire way, and make sure it’s moving as late as possible,” he said.

Then McGarry stepped away from Brown and crouched down into a catcher’s position.

“Do it,” he said. “Let it rip. I’ve got your back.”

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Brown started firing off sliders. They were coming in crisp and coming in fast, and McGarry was amped about it — more amped than even Brown himself.

“For Griff to be so unselfish, to help me out with that pitch … it makes me want to be the next one to help someone out,” Brown said. “Sometimes competition can get the best of you or make you get bitter, but I don’t see that with any of these guys. Seeing how they pull for each other, seeing how they pull for me, it makes me want to pull for them even more.”

Brown is right. They are competing with one another. Only about 10% of minor leaguers reach the big leagues. But among these four Phillies prospects — McGarry, Brown, Abel, and Painter — there is a kinship and a selflessness. They see each other as brothers, all roughly at the same level (with the exception of the recently-promoted McGarry), and striving toward a common goal: to reach the big leagues and help the Phillies as soon as possible.

Brown has become the veteran of the Jersey Shore rotation in McGarry’s absence. Abel, a hard-throwing righty from Portland, Ore., was immediately drawn to him. He remembers a span this season, from mid-May to mid-June, when Brown allowed only two earned runs over five starts. In that last start, on June 11 at Hudson Valley, he struck out 11 batters.

“He had feel for all of his pitches and just kept going and going,” Abel said of Brown. “I just really admire how he can go out there every time and be like, ‘OK, this is my game now.’ It felt like if I had a good outing, he would have a great outing. We were roommates on the road, and at the start of each week, we’d say, ‘Roomie shove.’ And then he’d go out and shove.”

“We’re just building off of each other,” Brown said. “When Abel and Painter do well, I want to do as well as them.”

Painter has been setting the tone of late. At 19, he is the youngest of this group — he was drafted out of high school like Abel — but has quickly established himself as a force to be reckoned with. The Phillies are slowly building up Painter’s workload, but in his last outing, on Saturday, he threw three perfect innings, striking out four.

When Painter was in single-A Clearwater, he would keep tabs on Abel. He’d check box scores after Abel’s outings and occasionally look at videos of his starts when he could. In Abel, he saw a pitcher he could identify with: a tall, right-handed power arm who throws the same four-pitch mix. It was hard to study him from afar, though, and Painter was eager to learn more.

“Now, I don’t have to look at a box score,” he said. “I get to see everything up close: his bullpens, his starts. I was thrilled to get up here, especially because of that. When I heard the news, I was like, ‘All right, it’s me and Mick now.’”

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It’s not just Painter who is learning from Abel. The 20-year-old Abel says that Painter, who is a bit of a goofball, has helped him dial back the intensity a few notches. Last Friday, Abel had an uncharacteristically bad outing. He allowed five earned runs in 4⅔ innings and walked six batters.

There was a time last year when an outing like that would have mentally destroyed him. Now, in large part thanks to Painter and his lightheartedness, Abel can move past it.

“He loves to have fun,” Abel said. “I think that’s helped me a lot with my mentality on the mound and in the clubhouse. It’s changed me. Before, I was a little bit too intense. He helps me stay loose.

“After a bad outing, I could come out of the game and pout, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to get my work done, come back to the dugout, and be myself. Not try to bring guys down.”

Painter’s carefree attitude extends beyond the field. Last week, after a day game, he decided to drive an hour and a half into Philadelphia to watch the Phillies take on the Nationals. It was a spontaneous decision, and Painter didn’t tell anyone in the organization that he was doing it. He just hopped in his car and left. He wore no Phillies gear, not even a cap. No one recognized him.

It was the first time the prospect had been back at Citizens Bank Park since the Phillies introduced him as their first-round pick on a Saturday afternoon in July 2021. The outcome wasn’t what he had hoped for — the Phillies lost to the Nationals, 3-2 — but that wasn’t the point. The point was to remind himself of what he, and his brothers, are working toward. They might not all make it there, but they are going to keeping supporting one another other even if they don’t.