Keep nodding, Andrew: Painter crafts ‘career-altering' outing in must-win spot originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
ATLANTA — Picture this.
You’re a 23-year-old rookie starting pitcher, a former first-round pick and the most highly anticipated pitching prospect the Phillies have had in years.
Your first stint in the majors didn’t go how anyone envisioned. Your second offered a much better glimpse of why everybody had been waiting. Then October arrives and all you hear about is pitching out of the bullpen.
With a fastball that can touch triple digits and a changeup that has transformed your arsenal, maybe that sounds like a pretty good place to let it eat. You’re available in Game 1, perhaps even to close it, but your name is never called.
Then your team needs you the next day with its season on the line. You enter a tie game in the eighth inning.
And your first six pitches are balls.
Gulp.
OK, you can stop using your imagination.
That was Andrew Painter on Wednesday afternoon at Truist Park, where the rookie delivered three scoreless innings in the Phillies’ 4-3, 10-inning win over the Atlanta Braves to keep their season alive.
“Obviously nerves getting to me a little bit at first,” Painter said. “I was super amped up. I was just trying to throw everything as hard as I could.”
The situation did little to calm him down.
Austin Riley opened the eighth with a four-pitch walk. Yes, that Austin Riley, who had buried the Phillies with a go-ahead three-run homer less than 24 hours earlier. Painter then missed with his first two pitches to Michael Harris II.
Six pitches. Six balls.
Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham came strolling toward the mound as Truist Park reached one of its loudest points of the afternoon.
The Phillies had already experienced enough emotional whiplash. Defensive mistakes by Bryce Harper and Alec Bohm helped Atlanta score twice in the seventh, putting Philadelphia six outs from elimination. Then Kyle Schwarber and Harper went back-to-back in the eighth to tie it.
Now Painter was having trouble finding the strike zone.
J.T. Realmuto kept his message simple.
“You got here, so you gotta trust your stuff here,” Realmuto recalled telling him. “You’re plenty good enough to get this guy out.”
Painter finally threw a strike to Harris. Then he turned to the pitch that has helped make him a different pitcher since his return to the majors.
The changeup.
Painter began pre-gripping the circle change in his glove this season, a similar concept to what he had done with his splitter. But while he believed the splitter grip had begun affecting the quality of his fastball, the changeup has become the complement that helps everything else play.
He buried one to Harris.
Ground ball to Bohm. Force at second. Back to first.
Double play.
Exhale.
“I think once I got that first strike in there, I was able to kind of ease in and it gave me a little bit of peace of mind,” Painter said.
The very next pitch produced a Sean Murphy pop-up in foul territory.
Painter’s first six pitches were out of the zone. His next three produced three outs.
“That double-play ball was huge for him, and that just sent him on a roll,” interim manager Don Mattingly said.
There would be no traditional closer waiting behind him.
Jhoan Duran was unavailable after throwing 27 pitches across two innings in Game 1, Mattingly confirmed afterward. The Phillies hoped to have him for Thursday’s deciding Game 3.
Wednesday belonged to Painter.
He returned for the ninth and recorded a groundout and flyout before Drake Baldwin singled with two outs, bringing the potential winning run aboard. Painter went right after Ozzie Albies, eventually muscling a 99.9 mph fastball under his hands for a harmless fly ball.
In between outs, Painter kept nodding on the mound.
It was a small gesture that pointed to something much bigger.
The Painter who arrived in the majors earlier this season didn’t always look this comfortable. He struggled badly during his first stint, with the first inning becoming a recurring problem. His fastball didn’t play the way the Phillies expected. His command disappeared too often. A rookie who had dominated almost everywhere before reaching the majors suddenly had to deal with failure on the sport’s biggest stage.
The Phillies sent him back to Triple-A.
And, as Mattingly put it, they didn’t send him there for one tune-up start.
“He had to go down and earn his way back,” Mattingly said. “If he wouldn’t have been pitching good, he wouldn’t have found his way back.”
Painter went to work.
Mechanics. Pitch mix. Sequencing. Figuring out what made the best version of a 6-foot-7 right-hander with some of the best raw stuff in the organization.
“I was kind of just figuring out who I was as a pitcher and learning through the failure,” Painter said. “I think we did a lot of good stuff down in Triple-A, whether it was mechanically, pitch mix, sequencing, just trying to figure out what made the best version of myself as a pitcher.”
The result has been a pitcher who carries himself differently.
“He went down, he didn’t complain, he went to work, kept pitching,” Mattingly said. “Went down, went to work, came back. He’s been a different guy.”
Wednesday offered the strongest evidence yet.
Painter remained in the game as it moved to the 10th. Then Bohm sent a two-out fly ball the opposite way. It kept carrying until it rattled beyond the right-field wall.
4-3.
Painter heard the reaction from the tunnel and emerged knowing the next three outs belonged to him.
“Knowing that three outs was going to get that job done,” he said, “letting everything loose, everything I had in the tank, just emptying it.”
Those three outs weren’t going to come easily.
Painter surrendered two singles, sandwiched around a pair of strikeouts.
Two outs. Two aboard.
The Phillies’ season was still one swing away from ending.
Painter attacked Dominic Smith with two changeups before reaching 0-2. Then he fired a fastball toward the inside corner.
Strike three.
At least Painter thought so. Smith challenged.
Painter was already walking toward the dugout, tapping his head to signal that he wanted Realmuto to challenge right back.
“He looked more sure it was a strike than I was, to be honest,” Realmuto said.
The review showed Painter had painted the corner. Game over.
Painter later described his reaction a little differently.
“I don’t know. That’s just kind of where my finish takes me,” he said. “I wanted the challenge. Kind of just blacked out in the moment.”
Harper loved what he saw.
He had watched Painter take moments throughout the outing to collect himself, including late in the game when the rookie stepped off, grabbed the rosin bag and deliberately tried to slow everything down.
“It kind of fired me up because he was able to slow down the moment,” Harper said.
His description of Painter’s entire performance was even more succinct.
“Absolute dawg mentality.”
Realmuto went even further.
“That’s a career-altering performance, in my opinion,” he said. “The amount of confidence that you can gain from that…”
Painter had never made a true relief appearance before Wednesday. He acknowledged that he had been pacing around the bullpen during Game 1, preparing for a role completely foreign to him.
This time, when the phone rang, he emptied the tank.
Thirty-seven pitches. Three innings. Three strikeouts. No runs.
His first postseason appearance ended with the 23-year-old closing an elimination game.
“I didn’t think I was going to be closing a game in the playoffs,” Painter said. “But I think I’m capable of a lot.”
That might be the biggest thing the Phillies learned Wednesday.
They spent much of the year figuring out exactly what Painter was capable of. In Game 2, with no Duran and no room for error, they asked him to find nine outs in a role he’d never truly handled before.
He did.
And with another elimination game coming Thursday, someone asked the rookie whether 37 pitches might prevent him from doing it again.
Painter smiled.
“Everything on the line,” he said. “Luzardo would make fun of me if I didn’t. I’m 23; he says I should be good every day.”
The Phillies live another day.
Apparently, Painter might pitch another one, too.
