On June 18, Andrew Painter went back to Triple-A with a 7.06 ERA and a fastball that major-league hitters were batting .404 against.
Seventy-six days later, he walked off the mound at Chase Field after seven scoreless innings.
The Phillies still had not scored.
That is what made Wednesday afternoon’s 1-0 loss to Arizona more interesting than the final score suggests. Philadelphia’s six-game winning streak ended. A chance to sweep disappeared. Atlanta’s win pushed the Phillies four games back in the National League East entering a four-game series between the clubs Friday at Citizens Bank Park.
But the largest development may have happened before James McCann ever stepped to the plate in the eighth inning.
Andrew Painter is becoming a different pitcher.
Painter held Arizona to two singles over seven innings, struck out six, walked nobody and threw 68 of his 93 pitches for strikes. After Lars Nootbaar opened the first inning with a single, Painter retired 19 of the next 20 hitters before Geraldo Perdomo singled with one out in the seventh. The only other Diamondbacks baserunner against him reached when Bryson Stott could not handle a 104-mph liner in the fourth.
The Phillies have waited months for an outing like that.
The more important point is that it no longer stands alone.
Painter was recalled July 31 after spending six weeks at Triple-A trying to repair a delivery that had betrayed him during his first run through the majors. Before the demotion, opponents hit .316 against him overall and .404 with a .660 slugging percentage against his four-seam fastball. Dave Dombrowski said at the time that Painter had been spinning away from the plate rather than working directly toward it, costing the fastball command and life.
Since coming back, the numbers have changed dramatically.
In seven starts since the recall, Painter has a 3.12 ERA and 0.89 WHIP in 40⅓ innings, allowing only 23 hits while striking out 38. Before Wednesday, the biggest lingering issue had been the first inning: Painter entered the afternoon with a 15.00 ERA in the opening frame since his return compared with 1.32 in every other inning. Nootbaar’s leadoff single provided another immediate test.
Painter erased it with three consecutive outs.
And then Arizona barely touched him again.
Look even closer and the recent progression becomes difficult to dismiss.
Painter went seven innings against St. Louis on Aug. 22, allowing one run on five hits with eight strikeouts and no walks. Six days later against the Angels, he gave up three runs on only two hits over six innings and struck out six. Wednesday: seven innings, two hits, no runs, no walks, six strikeouts.
That is 20 innings, nine hits, four earned runs, three walks and 20 strikeouts over his last three starts — a 1.80 ERA and 0.60 WHIP.
The Phillies entered this season knowing Painter’s development would not be linear. He had not thrown a competitive major-league pitch before April and was coming off Tommy John surgery that wiped out two full seasons. The 5.55 season ERA still tells the story of how difficult the first five months have been.
But it is beginning to tell an outdated version of Painter.
Wednesday gave the Phillies another glimpse of the pitcher who could matter considerably more in 2027 and beyond — and perhaps sooner.
That should have been enough to win.
Against an Arizona bullpen game, it wasn’t close.
The Diamondbacks used seven pitchers. The Phillies produced three hits.
Bryan De La Cruz had two of them, doubling in the third and singling to begin the sixth. Bryce Harper had the other, a seventh-inning single that extended his career-best on-base streak to 35 games. He also walked twice.
Everyone else went hitless.
The sixth inning summarized the afternoon.
De La Cruz opened with a single. Kyle Schwarber struck out. Trea Turner then grounded into a double play.
Three batters. Threat over.
Harper singled to start the seventh and never reached second safely. Philadelphia finished with only three hits, struck out nine times and never generated enough traffic to make Arizona’s parade of relievers uncomfortable.
That is the part of Wednesday worth carrying home.
The Phillies have spent the last month playing their best baseball of the season. They won 21 games in August, arrived in Arizona on a roll and took the first two games of this series. Even after Wednesday, they have lost only three times in their last 18 games.
One quiet afternoon does not erase any of it.
But Friday begins something entirely different.
Atlanta arrives for four games with a four-game division lead. The margin for wasting strong pitching performances gets smaller now. There are only 22 games left, and the Phillies no longer need to prove they can get hot. They need to prove they can turn that hot stretch into something meaningful.
Painter handed the ball to Jonathan Bowlan after seven scoreless innings with the game still 0-0.
Bowlan’s first pitch was a sweeper to McCann.
McCann drove it 409 feet to left.
That was the game.
Arizona needed one swing because Philadelphia never found one of its own.
The Phillies flew home with a series victory, a 79-61 record and a real chance to make the NL East interesting this weekend.
They may also have brought back something they did not have when Painter was sent to Allentown in June.
A reason to believe the Andrew Painter they had been waiting for is finally beginning to arrive.
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