Same old Phillies offense puts pressure on Andrew Painter to keep rotation elite
It hasn’t taken long for this lineup to fall back into familiar patterns. Which means the onus is on the pitching staff to keep the Phillies a 96-win team.
What if I told you that Andrew Painter finished his rookie season with 154 innings pitched and a 3.33 ERA while averaging 8.6 strikeouts, 2.3 walks, and less than a home run allowed per nine innings?
Awfully ambitious, right?
Now, what if I told you that the Phillies needed Painter to finish with those numbers?
Well, they might.
At least from my vantage point, Ranger Suárez’s offseason departure hasn’t gotten the consideration it warrants when projecting potential outcomes for this year’s Phillies team. The Phillies went 33-20 in his 53 starts over the last two seasons. His 3.33 ERA ranked 13th in the majors among 53 pitchers with at least as many starts. Sure, he was their fourth-best starter when Zack Wheeler was healthy last season. But a big reason they won 96 games is the production they got out of SP4.
This offseason, there was plenty of hand-wringing about the Phillies offense, and rightfully so. It hasn’t taken long for this lineup to fall back into familiar patterns. On Saturday, 29-year-old Jacob Latz looked like every other ordinary-looking lefty who has the good fortune to go up against the Phillies. That is, he looked like Cy Young, holding them hitless fo four innings in the Rangers’ 5-4 win in extra innings.
On Sunday, the Phillies didn’t get their first hit until the sixth inning, when Justin Crawford led off with a swinging bunt. They were down 6-0 at that point. It ended up as an 8-3 loss in which the Phillies did not have an extra-base hit and scored their runs on a sac fly, a hit by pitch, and a single. Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and Bryce Harper are a combined 5-for-37 on the young season.
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We’re only three games in. Opening weekend has very little predictive power for the rest of the season. There’s no reason to think the Phillies offense will be materially worse than it has been over the last few seasons.
“Obviously not the start we wanted to have on the weekend,” Harper said after the Phillies fell to 1-2 on Sunday, “but we’ll get there.”
Then again, the word “there” is doing an awful lot of work in those comments. There is nothing like seeing the Phillies offense in person to realize that it probably won’t be significantly better than it was last season. Which means the onus is on the pitching staff to keep them a 96-win team. That’s a daunting thought, because the rotation has been the best one or two units in the majors over the last couple of years.
Consider:
Last season, the Phillies had 13 turns through the rotation when they averaged at least six innings in each of their five starts. No other team had more than eight (Guardians) and only three others had more than five.
They had 12 turns through the rotation in which they averaged at least six innings and three or fewer runs in each of their five starts. No other team had more than eight, and only two had more than five (Red Sox, Guardians).
The Phillies led the majors in the number of trips through the rotation with a sub-3.00 ERA (16). They led the majors in the number of trips through the rotation averaging six innings with a sub-3.00 ERA.
The Phillies’ overall numbers in 2025 were about as elite as you can reasonably hope for. They led the majors with an average of 17.2 outs per start (i.e., 5⅔ innings). Since 2022, only two rotations have eaten more innings: the 2022 Astros (17.6 outs per start), and the 2024 Mariners (17.5 outs per start). During that stretch, only six teams have had a lower ERA than the Phillies’ 3.54 mark in 2025.
Which brings us back to Painter. He’ll be 10 days shy of his 23rd birthday on Tuesday, when he is scheduled to make his major league debut against the Nationals. Since 2021, exactly seven players age 24 or younger have pitched at least 130 innings with a league-average ERA as a rookie. Two of the guys who haven’t done it are Tarik Skubal (4.34 ERA in 149⅓ innings) and Hunter Brown (5.09 ERA in 155⅔ innings). In terms of stuff, command and size, Painter is as good of a prospect as any of them. But he has thrown just 243⅓ career innings in four minor league seasons and the Arizona Fall League, topping out at 118 in 26 starts in 2025.
By the end of last season, it was pretty clear the Phillies weren’t planning on re-signing Suárez, who ended up in Boston on a five-year, $130 million deal. They decided instead to allocate that money to Jesús Luzardo, who agreed to a five-year, $135 million contract extension earlier this spring. It was a sensible decision on a number of different levels, starting with the fact that Luzardo is two years younger than Suárez. But none of that changes a rather obvious truth. The Phillies lost one-fifth of the best rotation in the majors. Somebody has to make up the difference.
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It’s a bit of an oversimplification to say that Painter needs to be who Suárez was last year. Wheeler can contribute some of the offset if he starts more than the 24 games he started last year before his season-ending injury. Maybe Luzardo gives them 200 innings instead of 183. Maybe Aaron Nola is better than he was. Possible? Sure. But unless all of that happens — and nobody regresses — Painter will be the most important unknown on the roster.
The Phillies went 29-38 last season when their starting pitcher went less than six innings. They went 19-44 when their starter gave up three or more runs. We saw it on Saturday, when Nola gave up three runs in five innings. We saw it on Sunday when Luzardo gave up six in six. The Phillies need an elite rotation to win at a 95-game clip.
Circle Tuesday on your calendars, then.