{"id":744109,"date":"2026-06-18T03:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744109\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T03:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T03:23:12","slug":"phillies-option-andrew-painter-mlb-trade-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/744109\/","title":{"rendered":"Phillies Option Andrew Painter – MLB Trade Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Phillies optioned scuffling starter Andrew Painter<\/a> to Triple-A Lehigh Valley after today\u2019s game. They\u2019ll recall an extra reliever tomorrow to take his spot on the active roster.<\/p>\n

Painter was rocked for six runs on as many hits while completing just two innings in today\u2019s blowout loss at the hands of the Marlins. The rookie righty has given up at least a run per inning in four consecutive starts. He\u2019s up to an ugly 7.06 earned run average for the season, and he\u2019s now tied for the third-most earned runs allowed in MLB (51). Only four pitchers, two of whom pitch at Coors Field, have allowed more runs overall. The Phillies are 2-12 in Painter\u2019s appearances, all of which have either been starts or bulk outings behind an opener.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much in the underlying marks to suggest any kind of impending rebound. Painter hasn\u2019t missed many bats and has been susceptible to the longball. Miami got him for a couple homers today, pushing him to 1.94 per nine innings on the season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s obviously not the start to Painter\u2019s MLB career that he or the team had in mind. A first-round selection out of high school in 2021, Painter was widely viewed as the top pitching prospect in the game by the end of his first full minor league season. He might\u2019ve reached the Majors by the \u201923 campaign if not for an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. Painter would miss two full minor league seasons and wasn\u2019t as sharp when he returned.<\/p>\n

The 6\u20197\u2033 righty spent most of last year in Triple-A. He made 22 starts and posted a 5.40 ERA. The strikeout and walk profile was solid, but he struggled to keep the ball in the park even against Triple-A hitters. Painter\u2019s fastball, in particular, has been an issue since the injury.<\/p>\n

He still has above-average velocity, sitting at roughly 97 mph, but it doesn\u2019t have the same backspinning life at the top of the strike zone. Big league hitters have pummeled it, batting almost .400 while making contact on 90% of their swings. Even with solid secondary stuff, it\u2019s tough to have sustained success without the ability to attack hitters in the zone with the fastball.<\/p>\n

Despite the middling Triple-A numbers, the Phillies essentially locked Painter in as their fifth starter at the beginning of the season. They didn\u2019t make much of an effort to re-sign\u00a0Ranger Suarez<\/a>. They knew\u00a0Zack Wheeler<\/a> would open the season on the injured list, leaving rotation spots for both Painter and\u00a0Taijuan Walker<\/a>. The latter\u2019s performance was bad enough that the Phillies released him before the end of April, opening the rotation spot for Wheeler\u2019s return.<\/p>\n

The top half of Philadelphia\u2019s rotation is excellent.\u00a0Cristopher S\u00e1nchez<\/a> has an argument as the best pitcher in the National League. Wheeler has made a remarkable return from thoracic outlet surgery, posting a 2.01 ERA while averaging more than six innings over his first 10 starts.\u00a0Jes\u00fas Luzardo<\/a> has rebounded after getting blown up a few times in April.<\/p>\n

Aaron Nola<\/a> is locked into the fourth rotation spot by default, but he\u2019s carrying an ERA around 6.00 for a second consecutive year. Nola has also become too homer-prone in the back half of his career. The final rotation spot now seems wide open.\u00a0Alan Rangel<\/a> is their only other healthy starter on the 40-man roster. He has six games of MLB experience, all out of the bullpen. Rangel has a 3.74 ERA with solid strikeout and walk marks across 65 Triple-A frames this year, but he has only completed five innings in one of his last five minor league starts.<\/p>\n

Tucker Davidson<\/a> and\u00a0Bryse Wilson<\/a> are non-roster players with an ERA north of 6.00 at Lehigh Valley. Chuck King<\/a> and Drake Fellows<\/a> don\u2019t have any big league experience. The Phillies have an off day on Friday but will then play 13 straight games, so they\u2019ll need a fifth starter by the middle of next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Phillies optioned scuffling starter Andrew Painter to Triple-A Lehigh Valley after today\u2019s game. They\u2019ll recall an extra…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[64395,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-744109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-andrew-painter","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}