With No Fifth Starter, the Phillies’ Deadline Was a Failure

Hey there, Andrew Painter. How’s your rookie season going? Not great? Don’t worry about it. You’re only 23. Major League Baseball is really goddamn hard. You’ve got your whole career ahead of you. And it’s not like the fate of the Phillies’ seasons is resting on your shoulders.

Wait, what?

Shit.

The 2026 MLB trade deadline has come and gone. The Phillies addressed two of their three biggest needs. They added a bat (Luis Arraez) and two arms for the bullpen (Brooks Raley, Caleb Kilian). They did not trade for a starter.

That puts a whole lot of pressure on Painter.

With no more trade market to fall back on, the Phillies have little choice but to ask the rookie to be their No. 5 starter for the rest of the year. Considering how his debut season has gone, that’s a big ask.

Indeed, the Phillies asked a lot of Painter from the get-go this season. At first, he looked up to the challenge. The towering righty made his MLB debut on March 31. His fastball flirted with 99 mph. He struck out eight batters, six of them swinging. He gave up one run in 5.1 innings and collected the win.

Then, Painter gave up 50 runs in his next 13 games. He went 0-8. The Phillies lost all but two of those contests.

When they finally bit the bullet and sent him back to Triple-A, his 7.06 ERA was the highest of any starter who didn’t play his home games in Colorado. His opponents had hit .316 with a .901 OPS. Painter turned the average hitter into a superstar, and he turned the two-time reigning NL East champs into a mess whenever he took the mound.

Let me be clear. I don’t mean to hate on Painter. The blame shouldn’t fall on his shoulders. The blame belongs on the Phillies for putting one of their most promising young talents in a spectacular position to fail.

Painter sprained his UCL and didn’t play at all in 2023 and ’24. When he returned in 2025, he pitched to a 5.40 ERA in 22 Triple-A starts. His fastball was hittable, and he struggled to control his breaking stuff. The promise was still there, but he needed to make some adjustments.

That’s a pitcher who needs time. A pitcher who needs coaching. Not a pitcher that a team with World Series aspirations should be counting on every fifth day.

It’s not as if Painter forced the Phillies’ hand. There’s no good reason he shouldn’t have started the season at Triple-A. That’s what 23-year-old pitchers usually do. In the last five years, Paul Skenes is the only pitcher to start at least 30 games or throw at least 150 innings in his age-23 season or younger.

Yet, just like they did at the deadline, the Phillies ignored their rotation last winter. They needed to add another starting pitcher, but they didn’t. It was a questionable decision at the time. In hindsight, it was an inexcusable mistake.

The Phillies are 3-12 with Painter on the mound this year. They’ve also stunk like hot garbage behind Alan Rangel and Taijuan Walker. Altogether, they’ve lost 21 of the 25 games those three have pitched. In their other 88 games, they’ve played at a 103-win pace.

The responsibility for those 21 losses belongs to more than just those pitchers. Still, it’s hard not to wonder how much better this team would be with one more capable starter.

I don’t want to think like that. It’s pointless. There’s no use pining for the games the Phillies coulda shoulda woulda won. But the one lifeline keeping me from falling down that spiral of frustration was knowing that Dave Dombrowski could course correct at the deadline. That the right trade could erase his offseason mistake.

Instead, he doubled down on inaction. He doubled down on the Painter-or-bust game plan that has the Phillies barely clinging on to a Wild Card spot. Why?

Well, last Friday, Painter made his first MLB start in six weeks. He struck out six in six innings of two-run ball. By the box score, it was his best performance since his big league debut. Was that one start enough to change the team’s mind?

It shouldn’t have been, especially since he was torched with a 57.1% hard-hit rate on 14 balls in play. The Orioles hit .150 with a .611 OPS against him, but Statcast estimates they should have hit .257 with an .832 OPS, based on their quality of contact.

Moreover, it’s not as if Painter was dominating in the minors to earn his second chance. Four of his five starts following his demotion were good, but one was a disaster. The Phillies called him because they didn’t have another option.

The trade deadline was their chance to give themselves another option. Now that chance is gone. I just don’t know what Dombrowski was thinking.

Throughout June and July, several reports said the Phillies were seeking a fifth starter. As the trade deadline came closer, it seemed like they might be aiming even higher. They scouted arms like Freddy Peralta, Clay Holmes, Foster Griffin, and Dustin May.

Personally, I wanted to see Kevin Gausman in red pinstripes, but I wasn’t picky. I know that sometimes trades don’t work out. A good executive knows when to hang up the phone when the other team’s asking price is too high. But the Phillies didn’t just whiff on one target. They whiffed on the whole market.

If the Phillies had gotten off to a big lead in the NL East, maybe this wouldn’t matter. But they aren’t coasting their way to a playoff spot right now. They’re 7.5 back of the Braves in the division and only two games up on the Padres and Marlins in the Wild Card race.

The Phillies can’t afford a near-guaranteed loss every fifth day. But that’s the future they’re looking at.

Dave Dombrowski could have fixed that, but he didn’t. Now, it’s all up to Andrew Painter to rise to the occasion and save the team that failed him. No pressure, kid.