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Andrew Painter Looked Good in St. Louis, and So Did the Changeup
Published:
The Phils won 6-5 in St. Louis on Monday night. Didn’t see that one coming, especially with a depleted bullpen, Andrew Painter on the road, and relatively short turnaround after extra innings on Sunday.
However:
Everything except the fastball has looked good since Painter returned from Lehigh Valley. That pitch still doesn’t have the life it had pre-surgery, and he threw it 26 times last night for an average velocity of 96.1 mph. He normally throws it 32% of the time but that number dipped to 28% in St. Louis.
What he did do was throw the hell out of the changeup on Monday night, 29 pitches in total, which was 31.2% of the night’s offering.
It was actually his most-used pitch of the night, a pitche he had only used 4.2% of the time before last night.
Some more specific data here on the 29 changeups he threw:
And some information from Sportradar’s database:
- He allowed 0 hits on the pitch (all 5 changeups put in play resulted in outs).
- The average exit velocity on those 5 balls in play was a tiny 72.5 mph.
- He threw the pitch for a strike 72.4% of the time (21 of 29), and Cardinals batters swung at 62.1% of them (18 swings).
- He generated 5 whiffs on those 18 swings (a 27.8% whiff rate), including 4 swinging strikes and 1 foul tip.
- The pitch averaged 90.6 mph, topping out at 95.5 mph and dropping as low as 88.2 mph.
This is good. Last night felt like a classic Doc Rivers “scheduled loss” on paper and they pulled it off anyway. If they can get something out of Painter moving forward it really changes a lot for this team in the second half.
Fingers crossed.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com