It may be fall and the baseball season begins to wind down (and heat up at the same time, thanks to Freddie Freeman), but the game is still being played elsewhere.
In the deserts of Arizona, to be exact, as the Philadelphia Phillies' No. 2 prospect and top pitching prospect Andrew Painter, who is only 21 years of age, has been putting on a show in the Arizona Fall League and giving many Phillies fans hope for the future.
In his most recent outing, a 9-6 victory at Salt River Fields, Painter threw 32 pitches, his longest play thus far in the Fall League. He only missed the strike zone six times. All while throwing heater after heater and increasing his average pitch speed in the process.
Andrew Painter's 'new' pitch will make him even better than we remember
But in the midst of this short but efficient dominance from the young pitcher, Painter somehow dazzled even further and added a new trick to his set, per Sam Dykstra of MLB.com. Painter himself has called it a slider.
“It's a slider,” Painter said, per Dykstra. “It’s the same pitch, same grip, just a different thought process. One of them, the slower one, is for a strike most of the time. When I get to two strikes, it's the same grip, but I'm just thinking to go gloveside away to a righty and in on a lefty. I'm just thinking more heater with it. Same grip though.”
Painter first used a hard breaking ball during last spring training, leaving many a buzz about whether he would be on the major league roster to start the 2023 season (he probably would have done better than Taijuan Walker).
But with this slider or cutter or whatever you want to call it, it was definitely effective in his most recent outing. He threw seven against Salt River, and six were dotted (or you can say painted) in the zone for strikes, and one was thrown for a swing and a miss.
With plans of expanding his work to 20 innings before the end of the Arizona Fall League and Painter continuing to work on his new and improved craft, fans should be excited about what he will eventually bring to the Phillies when the time is right.