PHOENIX — After going from May 19 to Aug. 10 without a win out of the No. 5 spot in the starting rotation, the Phillies have found something in rookie and former top prospect Andrew Painter. Prior to Wednesday, the Phillies had won four straight Painter outings. He’s done more than just stabilize the back of the rotation. He looks like a weapon in October.
Painter threw seven innings in a start for the second time in his last three outings. He allowed only two hits and struck out six over seven in what was his best outing in a Phillies uniform. He got the no-decision in a 1-0 Phillies loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday afternoon at Chase Field. The Phillies (79-61) hold a six-game lead for an NL playoff spot with 22 left to play. They currently hold a 0.5-game lead over the Chicago Cubs for the top wild card spot in the NL.
Painter attacked a passive Arizona lineup with strikes. He needed 22 pitches to get through the first inning unscathed. After that, he threw 61 pitches over six innings. Painter said he got the D-Backs to change their approach through executing his pitches the first time through the lineup.
“I think you earn that the first time through the lineup,” Painter said. “They knew that I was in the zone a lot, so you kind of have to force their hand. You need the early outs if you’re gonna throw seven-plus inning. Just set that tone early and try to earn a little bit more chase or a little bit more aggressiveness a second and third time through.”
His emergence as an elite starter this year didn’t look like a remote possibility as recently as July, when Painter was in the minor leagues. At this time last month, the Phillies were contemplating adding another starting pitcher before the trade deadline. They took a gamble on Painter instead due to the high prices in the trade market. They liked what they saw in his first outing back up in Baltimore right before the deadline.
It’s working right now.
“For him to find his stride and to find whatever queue that he found, it’s going to help him,” Kyle Schwarber said. “Because it’s going to help us out. Especially once we keep getting later and later down this push, he’s a big arm for us.”
The depth beyond the top five of Cristopher Sánchez, Zack Wheeler, Jesús Luzardo, Aaron Nola and Painter is scary, but with the rotation clicking the way it is right now and everyone healthy, the Phillies have a chance to win every single game. In the Arizona series, Phillies starters combined to allow only two earned runs in 18 2/3 innings.
“Today was a day where I felt really good about Paint,” interim manager Don Mattingly said postgame. “Obviously, the first inning thing. Every outing, he’s been pretty good. It’s nice to know. I think you get the feeling now, you know, early in the year, it was like, that start, basically between him and (Nola) was like, ‘Oh, these are bad days.’ Now, both of those guys, you feel like, are going to give you a chance to win. It is nice to have that.”
The Phillies did have a bad day at the plate. You can’t win without runs, and the Phillies were shut out by seven different Arizona bullpen arms. The Phillies offense has built up some good will from their hot month of August, but losing 1-0 after a rookie threw seven shutout innings still stings.
The first pitch out of Jonathan Bowlan’s hand in the eighth resulted in a solo home run from James McCann. McCann crushed a first-pitch sweeper that caught too much of the plate. Bowlan was working on back-to-back days after recording four outs on Tuesday. He’s still the No. 1 option outside of Jhoan Duran.
The Phillies have lost only five games since Aug. 9, but in all five of those losses, the Phillies scored two runs or fewer. It’s the first time they have been shut out since Aug. 11. The lineup at the time combined to score only one run in two games against St. Louis. Then they went to the cornfield in Iowa and the entire identity of the offense changed for the better.
They are hoping for a better showing on Friday night at Citizens Bank Park against Atlanta. They enter the four-game series four-games back of the Braves in the NL East and have a tough matchup in the opener with Chris Sale on the mound. He’ll start opposite of Sánchez.
“I think we’re all excited for the challenge,” Schwarber said. “We’re all excited for when we get back and walk into the field. Hopefully, that weather starts cooling down, getting a little bit of that fall-weather feel. It starts feeling playoffy, and the fan base is gonna be rocking and rolling. Looking forward to a rowdy weekend. We’re all as confident in ourselves as any other group.”
