There's a version of this conversation Phillies fans have had before — even if they don't remember having it. Cole Hamels was drafted 17th overall out of a San Diego high school in 2002 and arrived in the organization with the kind of arm that makes evaluators use phrases like "generational" and "once in a decade." He then promptly missed most of 2004 with elbow tendinitis, broke his pitching hand before the 2005 season started, and got shut down later that same year with back spasms — never making more than 10 professional starts across his first two seasons of baseball.
The pitcher who would one day throw 35 postseason innings with a 1.80 ERA, win both the NLCS and World Series MVP awards in the same October, and become the face of the greatest era of Phillies baseball in a generation — that guy spent his age-20 and age-21 seasons unable to stay healthy long enough to matter. And nobody in Philadelphia gave up on him.
It's that comparison — Hamels to Painter — that Philadelphia Phillies beat writerJeff Kerr recently put back into the conversation on X, pointing out just how similar the early career arcs of these two franchise arms actually look when you put them side by side. The comment section lit up. Some fans bought in. Others weren't so sure. But the comparison isn't just nostalgia — it's a legitimate framework for understanding what Andrew Painter is going through right now, and why the patience this moment requires is both earned and warranted.
There’s another layer to this conversation Phillies fans should recognize, too, because that entire era of Phillies baseball was ultimately built on pitchers whose careers didn't follow clean developmental timelines.
Roy Halladay posted a 10.64 ERA in 2000 and was sent all the way back to High-A ball to rebuild his delivery from scratch with the help of sports psychologists and pitching coaches before eventually becoming a Hall of Famer. Cliff Lee followed a different path, but one that may actually parallel Painter's situation even more closely — a talented big-bodied arm whose command and consistency took time to fully arrive. Lee posted a 6.29 ERA in 2007, got demoted back to Triple-A, and faced real questions about whether he would ever become more than an inconsistent mid-rotation starter. One season later, he won the American League Cy Young Award.
By the time Halladay and Lee arrived in Philadelphia together, they had become two of the smartest and most efficient pitchers in baseball — not because their careers developed perfectly, but because they learned how to command elite stuff over time.
All of which is to say: Andrew Painter's 6.89 ERA through seven major league starts isn't the story. It's a chapter — and it's an early one.
What the numbers actually say about Andrew Painter's Phillies development
The surface line is real, and it's fair to acknowledge it — a 6.89 ERA, a 1-4 record, a fastball that has had some command issues setting up his secondary stuff. Nobody is here to pretend that's a Cy Young campaign. But the underlying data may be telling a meaningfully different story, and it's the kind of story that should give Phillies fans something to hold onto while the big picture develops.
Painter's xERA is nearly two runs lower than his actual ERA — meaning the quality of contact he's allowing simply does not match what the surface results suggest. His average exit velocity sits at 89 mph (51st percentile) and his hard-hit rate is only 37.3% (60th percentile), meaning hitters are not squaring him up. His chase rate is 34.2%, ranking in the 82nd percentile — batters are chasing his stuff out of the zone at an elite rate. His walk rate of 7.8% sits in the 66th percentile, which, for a 6-foot-7 pitcher still rebuilding command off TJ, is a genuinely encouraging sign. And then there are the secondary pitches: his slider has an above-average whiff and strikeout rate, and his split-finger is proving to be an elite strikeout pitch.
The problem isn't the arsenal. It never has been with Painter. The problem is fastball command — specifically, the ability to locate a 96.1 mph four-seamer to both edges of the zone with enough consistency to make his secondary pitches work the way they're designed to work. And here's where the ex-pitcher perspective matters, because this is the part that's hardest for most people to understand.
The Part That Takes The Longest
Since I am also 6-foot-7. I know exactly what it's like to try to command a baseball when your arm path is long, your hip-to-shoulder sequence has more distance to travel, and the margin for timing error is amplified by the sheer amount of body you have to coordinate on every single pitch. The stuff comes back after Tommy John — the arm speed, the velocity, the bite on the breaking ball. Those things usually return. But the fine-motor precision of locating a fastball to a two-inch window at the black, over and over, with the consistency that separates a quality major league start from a rough one — that is genuinely the last thing to come back, and it shouldn't be rushed.
Andrew Painter made his major league debut on March 31 of this year. He missed 2023 and 2024 entirely to Tommy John surgery and recovery. He is still returning to competitive baseball at the highest level in the world — at age 23, at 6-foot-7, with the entire fan base of a contending franchise watching his ERA tick up in real time. The fact that he is not allowing consistent, hard contact while he's still finding his command should tell you something important: the arm is there, the stuff is real, and when the timing fully clicks — and it should — this rotation spot is going to look like a bargain.
The Phillies know this. One organization official put it plainly after Painter's AFL Pitcher of the Year performance last fall: "When Painter is healthy, he looks like the kind of arm you build a rotation around." That evaluation didn't change because of a rough April.
The Bigger Picture
There's also a practical dimension to this that goes beyond the box score. The Phillies are in a championship window right now — built around Harper, Turner, Schwarber, and a roster designed to compete. The value of a pitcher like Painter — whether he's anchoring this rotation in 2027, or serving as the centerpiece of a trade that brings back a difference-maker — is enormous, and it compounds the more time and runway he's given to develop. Organizations that cut their top pitching prospects loose at the first sign of growing pains sometimes regret it. The Phillies built their last championship team by being patient with a left-hander who broke his hand in a bar fight.
Hamels became a World Series MVP. Halladay became a Hall of Famer. Cliff Lee won a Cy Young. All of them went through something hard before they got there — and all did it in an organization that didn't flinch when early numbers were ugly.
Andrew Painter is 23 years old, filling up the strike zone and still learning what his body can do at 96 miles per hour against the best hitters alive. The story is still being written — and if the history of this franchise means anything at all, Phillies fans already know how it can end.
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