Phillies president rules out top pitching prospect's debut in 2023

Phillies top pitching prospect Andrew Painter has had an injury-plagued 2023 season. A potential season-opening rotation member, the highly-touted righty sprained the UCL in his throwing elbow in spring training. His rehab was set back a couple of weeks ago when he experienced renewed discomfort and was shut back down.

Philadelphia expressed general relief about the latest testing on Painter’s elbow, saying his UCL was healing (via Matt Gelb of The Athletic). The soreness led them to back down his throwing program out of an abundance of caution though. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski suggested this afternoon that they’re no longer viewing Painter as a key factor for the 2023 MLB staff.

“We’re not counting on him as depth at this time,” Dombrowski told Todd Zolecki of MLB.com. “Where he is at this point, he has tenderness [in the elbow]. He’s still dealing with that. I mean, you can just do the math. It just doesn’t make sense. I think basically as of a couple weeks ago when he had that [setback], in my own mind I thought that’s it for this year.”

While the Phils haven’t officially announced Painter as being done for the season, it looks unlikely he’ll make his MLB debut before 2024. Barring further setbacks, the 20-year-old still figures to enter next year as one of the sport’s top pitching prospects and a potential factor for the MLB rotation.

Relatedly, Dombrowski told Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of the New York Post on their podcast that Philadelphia was open to adding rotation depth before the Aug. 1 deadline. That’s no surprise; as Dombrowski pointed out, the vast majority of the league could stand to secure more pitching depth.

Philadelphia has a starting five of Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suárez, Taijuan Walker and Cristopher Sánchez. Sánchez was a late entrant in that mix but has pitched well through six starts. In 30 1/3 innings, the 26-year-old southpaw owns a 3.26 ERA built on an excellent 54.1% grounder rate.

Dombrowski praised Sánchez’s performance and implied the Phils were happy with their current top five starters. However, he indicated they could look to fortify the depth in case anyone in their current group suffers an injury. Bailey Falter stands as the No. 6 starter. He has a 4.38 ERA over nine Triple-A starts after surrendering a 5.13 mark over 40 1/3 big league innings early in the season.