Leave it to Philadelphia fans and media to worry about things they shouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over. On the night Zack Wheeler returned to the Phillies, their record sat at 8-18, and they were probably the worst team in baseball to that point in the season. His return was just a couple of days removed from the Phillies DFA’ing Taijuan Walker, who was maybe the worst starting pitcher in baseball through the first five rotations through. Andrew Painter kind of looked like a normal rookie trying to figure things out and the night before, Rob Thomson had left him in a batter too long against Atlanta in what had been a good start up until that point. In the time since then, the Phillies are 32-16, but 1-8 in Painter’s starts. If the Phillies continue this rather substantial stretch they’ve been on for almost two months the rest of the way, they’ll win 98 or 99 games. They’re going to be a playoff team rather easily in the end. Painter’s struggles have been substantial, but they have been but a bump on the road for a team that is going to steamroll to one of the NL Playoff spots this season. Yes, I said steamroll.

This does not mean that Painter’s problems are not a real problem. Half the games they’ve lost in the last 48 games were his starts. That’s astoundingly bad. By contrast, Aaron Nola has been as absolutely mediocre as a league average four or five starter over that stretch (to be read, you don’t enjoy his starts) and the Phillies have won the overwhelming majority of them. Yes, it’s not even close to .500. Basically if Painter was going three or four OK innings in his starts and handing the ball to the bullpen the rest of the way, the Phillies would very likely have three or four more wins than they have. Painter has simply not been good enough to be a major league pitcher. I have read plenty of writers and fans lamenting that Alan Rangel is the best current option to replace him in the rotation, and I don’t agree with them, or any talk of the Phillies going and trying to trade for a fifth starter in June. They could literally treat the fifth spot in the rotation as essentially a bullpen/opener game, try to get three or four okay innings from Rangel, and they’ll be a better team for it. The bar is super low.

Of course in the world of sports talk hyperbole today you’re seeing people write Painter’s obituary and say the Phillies should just trade any young prospect they can for any MLB ready help they can, because most prospects fail. There are folks ready to give up on Justin Crawford after a tough month or so, as well as Felix Reyes, Gabriel Rincones Jr., Otto Kemp, and any other number of younger players. Of course this is how you end up as the Angels, watching Brandon Marsh become the player you desperately needed in another uniform before the age of 30. Crawford for sure, but I’d probably say Reyes and Rincones too, need an extended period of at-bats in the majors to figure it out. Crawford’s game probably will take some time to reach it’s potential, but the team is winning games while he figures it out right now, and that really doesn’t make it as big of a problem as some fans would believe. Reyes hit his 16th homer in AAA on Tuesday, but has struggled in sporadic playing time in the major leagues so far- because sporadic playing time is not a good way to see if a guy who crushed AA and AAA as a full time player can hit in the majors. If it were me, I would not be carrying two back-up catchers who cannot hit major league pitching (again, it’s not like they play enough to improve, and Lord knows they should be giving Marchan one start in every series to save J.T. at this age), I’d be platooning Rincones and Reyes in left and getting Reyes some starts at third base as well, to see what they can actually do in the majors. This team is winning games anyway, because their top three starting pitchers, their top several relievers, and their top three or four bats are all so good that they can sustain winning two-thirds of their game when all healthy and playing. You have about a month to decide what people are ahead of the trade deadline and then go get what’s necessary then. Maybe these guys aren’t good enough to win with. Maybe they are. I’d actually kind of like to know.

As for Painter, it’s important to look back on the early careers of Max Scherzer, Roy Halladay, Curt Schilling, and Randy Johnson and understand that not every Hall-of-Fame level stud pitcher that can carry a staff came up ready to carry a staff like a Justin Verlander or Paul Skenes. Hell, Zack Wheeler spent his early years baffling the Mets and the league as to what he was. Writing him off today would be a mistake, though I’m not saying I wouldn’t put him in a trade if I could actually get a difference maker under contract for a while onto my team. Painter might still figure it out if given the time by his organization, he’s only 23 right now. There are guys who will be drafted at his age this year. Blaming the Phillies for holding Painter as a top prospect when literally the whole league called him a top ten prospect in 2023 (and even some in 2024), is silly. The problem since his Tommy John surgery is basically two things- his fastball is flat and his command has not returned. Some folks want to talk about his velocity, but for the most part it has returned and is at least pretty normal. The Phillies are not asking him to be a number one right now, and realistically he needs to be a number three in like 2028 for this team to flourish with him, the bar is not super high. He just needs to be a league average (aka- Nola) fourth or fifth starter right now and stop getting absolutely raked the way he has this season. The problem is simple though- it may not happen. We are about 13 months into him pitching in live professional games post-surgery, the majority of that in AAA and the Majors, and his fastball has lacked it’s old movement since. The Phillies claimed some of it was his arm slot last year, then told us it was fixed in Spring Training, and the ball is still flat. Guys throwing in the mid-to-high 90’s with a flat fastball get hit hard in the Major Leagues, and also many times in AAA. He could certainly survive as a mid to back end rotation piece who doesn’t cost much for the next half decade in Philadelphia if he had better command of all of his stuff, but he has not had that last year or this year. You can’t hang breaking balls against professional hitters. You can’t miss your location with a flat 96 mph fastball in the majors. I don’t know if Painter’s lack of improvement on these things from last year to this year is a Painter problem or a coaching problem, but if no one fixes it, he might not ever be a Major League starter, or even reliever.

Given that the Phillies are a team willing to spend money, Painter failing wouldn’t be as bad of a long term hit as it would be on a small market team. Even so, him being at least a league average guy would be a huge help. In the short term though? Honestly, I don’t get the freak out, or people ready and willing to pay a premium to go get a starting pitcher who would never throw a playoff inning for you outside of mop up (think Taijuan Walker and Walker Buehler *last year*). Yes, I’d like the Phillies to try to get a couple (two or three, quantity over a big splash) of right handed or quality bats in general at the deadline and a late inning reliever, because those moves would help this team in October, and maybe we need a fifth starter at some point later, but these are not urgent, immediate problems for a team winning two-thirds of it’s games for a nearly 50 game sample now. The Phillies have time to see what some of these younger players can do for sustained runs, and they should be trying them out to see just that. They’re on their way to the playoffs. I’ll be honest, I’d be very surprised if they don’t finish as the fourth seed and first Wild Card winner in the National League, and that is perfectly fine with me. Outside of LA, Atlanta, and Milwaukee, most of their competition for that spot have much more glaring, important holes on their roster than we do over the long haul. You don’t win the World Series in June, and the Phillies won’t win or lose it because of their fifth starter. They have much more important problems in their path to winning right now.