Painter went 3-10 with a 5.40 ERA in his first big league season, then posted a 3.65 ERA over his last 11 starts. The club is preparing to enter 2027 with him in its projected rotation, and the good stretch is 61.2 innings long.
Stats are from MLB's public Stats API, read Oct. 30, 2026, ET. The club's plans and quotes come from NBC Sports Philadelphia, which we cite by name. The June 17 and July 31 split dates are our choice, and we explain them in the piece. We did not look at pitch speed, pitch mix or the quality of the lineups he faced, so we do not say why his results changed. Nothing here is about his health. Opinion is labeled.*
Andrew Painter finished his first major league season 3-10 with a 5.40 ERA, according to MLB's stats. He pitched 126.2 innings in 25 games, 23 of them starts, with 115 strikeouts, 47 walks and 21 home runs allowed. He is 23, born April 10, 2003, and made his MLB debut March 31.
The club has him in next year's plans, according to NBC Sports Philadelphia. The outlet reported on Oct. 15 that the club is preparing to enter 2027 with Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez, Aaron Nola, Jesús Luzardo and Painter as the projected rotation, and that president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said trading from that group is not the current plan. On Oct. 29 the outlet quoted Dombrowski from the end-of-season press conference: "I'm not sure there are too many clubs in baseball that like their starting rotation better than ours." Neither report says where Painter slots or what the club weighs in him. The question is how much of his year it is counting.
The stretch since his recall was good, and it should be said first. The Phillies recalled Painter from Triple-A Lehigh Valley on July 31. In the 11 starts after that, through Sept. 24, he allowed 25 earned runs in 61.2 innings, a 3.65 ERA. He struck out 62 and walked 23, better than 2.5 strikeouts per walk, and gave up 48 hits and seven home runs. Eight of the 11 starts were three earned runs or fewer. On Sept. 2 at Arizona he threw seven shutout innings. He also made one postseason appearance, three scoreless innings in relief at Atlanta on Sept. 30.
He did that in his first season in the big leagues. NBC Sports Philadelphia noted on Oct. 29 that his final seven starts came to a 3.27 ERA with 44 strikeouts in 41⅓ innings, and our math on the game log agrees. It is a real stretch.
The Phillies optioned Painter to Lehigh Valley on June 18. Through June 17, in 14 games, 12 of them starts, he had a 7.06 ERA: 51 earned runs in 65.0 innings, with 14 home runs and 84 hits allowed. June alone was three games, 11.2 innings and 17 earned runs. His last start before the option was 2.0 innings and six earned runs at home against Miami on June 17.
In Triple-A he made five starts from June 28 to July 26. Those came to 23.2 innings and a 4.56 ERA, and included one start on July 10 of 2.2 innings and seven earned runs.
We picked those two dates because June 17 is the day before the option and July 31 is the day he came back. The two stretches cover his whole major league season. The innings add up to 126.2 and the earned runs to 76, which is the 5.40.
Opinion: the club can be right to keep him in the plan and still be leaning on a small number. The 61.2 good innings are fewer than the 65.0 bad ones. The league ERA this year was 4.17, our math from MLB's team totals, so his 3.65 beat the league and his season line did not. A full-season 5.40 is 1.23 runs above it.
There is a second 5.40 in his recent past. At Lehigh Valley in 2025 he made 22 starts, threw 106.2 innings and had a 5.40 ERA, per MLB's minor league records. That is the same number in two different leagues, a coincidence and not a trend, and we mention it only for context.
NBC Sports Philadelphia wrote that his six weeks at Lehigh Valley "allowed him to correct his delivery and rediscover his fastball." That is the outlet's description. We have not seen velocity or pitch-mix data, and we have not compared the lineups he faced before and after. Whether the lineups after July 31 were easier than the ones before June 18 is the check that would tell us the most, and we have not made it.
The benchmarks here are ours. Start with a second stretch of about 60 innings at or below the league's 4.17 ERA early next season. That would make the good sample bigger than the bad one and move the question from 61.2 innings to something near 120. Next is whether the home runs stay down. He allowed 14 in the first 65.0 innings and seven in the next 61.2.
The club has also said where it sees a gap. NBC Sports Philadelphia quoted Dombrowski on Oct. 29: "It's not starting pitching. It's starting-pitching depth. We'll get some more starting-pitching depth." Opinion: depth behind the five covers either outcome for Painter. It does not tell us which outcome is more likely, and only innings will.
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