PHILADELPHIA — The day after he was demoted to the minor leagues, Andrew Painter came to Citizens Bank Park. He played catch in the outfield with a coach on Thursday morning. He packed his locker. He met with several Phillies coaches and officials who were formulating a plan to fix their top pitching prospect.When Painter reports to Triple-A Lehigh Valley on Friday to begin the next phase of his professional career, there is a consensus on what must improve. How Painter repairs his fastball, a pitch that Painter was reluctant to use once big-league hitters destroyed it, is unclear. Everyone has a theory. There are many people in Painter’s head, and the 23-year-old pitcher has become obsessed with the underlying metrics of his struggles.So, that’s a decent place to begin.“One is just resetting his joy of competing in the game,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said. “Getting wrapped up in the game. Probably just a little bit of a quick reset on enjoying his baseball. I know that’s kind of a cop out, but the big leagues can wear you down. He’s worn down a little bit. He’s worked his tail off to try to solve some of the issues that he knows, everyone knows, and it just hasn’t quite worked yet.”Can you 'Name that Dude'?Derek VanRiper and Eno SarrisThe Phillies asked Painter to be so much, so fast. They were ready to put him in the majors at 19, then he blew out his elbow. They expanded his arsenal as he recovered from Tommy John surgery and expected him to arrive in the majors sometime last summer. They all but handed him a rotation spot this spring despite his 2025 ineffectiveness at Triple A. They continued to start him this month even as the same problems persisted.Maybe the Phillies have failed Painter at numerous junctures, but it’s Painter’s career. There is a certain maturity that comes with being humbled in the majors.All of it — his mechanics, his arsenal — looks different than it did before surgery in 2023, when he was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. Returning to that is not as simple; Painter is a different person than he was then. He is bigger. And he has a literal scar across his right elbow.The Phillies still believe, as they should. Painter has an exceptional aptitude for pitching, which is why the team felt they could challenge the young righty. But one of the most basic things suffered in plain sight.“Everyone seemingly understands the fastball’s not where it needs to be,” Cotham said. “I think he’s closer than most think.”The Phillies were not blind to what several rival evaluators had identified as Painter’s fatal flaw this season: He was falling toward the first-base side of the mound before ever releasing the baseball. It inhibited his extension — the ability to release the ball closer to the plate, making it more deceptive and tougher for the hitter to see. It prevented Painter, at times, from knowing where a single pitch he threw would go.Painter had become too rotational in his delivery. Everything — except his sweeping slider — suffered for it. Whether that pitch, something Painter had not really thrown until after his surgery, contributed to the over-rotating is unknown.“Most of it is delivery-oriented,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “Because he’s done some things with his delivery, just going more directly to the plate rather than spinning off.”Cotham, who will monitor Painter’s minor-league progress from the majors, doesn’t want Painter to chase more extension just for the sake of releasing the ball closer to the plate. There are basic mechanical adjustments, Cotham thinks, that can help Painter in his quest for a more reliable fastball. Just using his 6-foot-7 frame better, to move down the mound slope, is a start.“Finishing his delivery, having the ball kind of flat-line to the plate and not pull or cut,” Cotham said. “I think that’s the extension I’m curious about. I’m not sitting here saying, like, ‘Well, if he gets his hand 3 more inches out, it’s gonna be better.’ Because in some ways, if he does that, he might cut it more. You might get unintended consequences.”Cleaner movements make everything better. But if it were that simple, it would have already been fixed.“We just need to maybe direct it a little more at the plate at times,” Cotham said. “And if the ball’s spinning slightly better, it’s a compounding effect. He’s got 99 (mph) in there, and there’s 99 in there with really good ball flight.”“One is just resetting his joy of competing in the game,” Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham said of Andrew Painter. “(Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)There is a mental element to this, then, and several of Painter’s teammates were convinced this was the biggest piece. Everyone wants Painter to be something. It is tough for a young player to take ownership of the bad with the good.Cotham made two mound visits in two innings of Painter’s last outing, Wednesday. The whole thing was weighing on Painter, who posted a 7.06 ERA in 65 innings.“The first thing,” Cotham said, “is making sure, like, ‘Hey, we’re behind you. It’s not just you out there. We’re out there with you, and I want you to keep going. And if you’re going to go down, give them everything you f—ing got. Everything.’ And you can live with that if you do it that way. If you go down a different way and you don’t give them everything you got, it’s a little harder to swallow.“So I think he can hold his head high because he competed very hard. We’re going to help him. He’s going to continue to work. He’s close. He’s really close.”Entering Thursday, the Phillies were 4-15 and outscored by 72 runs in games pitched by Painter and Taijuan Walker. They were 36-19 with a plus-54 run differential in games pitched by everyone else.“We got four that match up with anybody’s probably in baseball,” Dombrowski said.He is not wrong. But someone has to be the fifth starter.The Phillies added veteran righty Bryse Wilson to their bullpen on Thursday; he was scheduled to start that night for Triple A. He could be an option to slide into the rotation next week as the fifth starter. So could Alan Rangel, who’s had an up-and-down season at Lehigh Valley. The Phillies could try a bullpen game every fifth day, which would be a creative use of the depth they have assembled in that unit, but that is unlikely.Painter will not immediately pitch for Lehigh Valley. The Phillies do not have to rebuild him totally, but they are going to give him time to work in side bullpen sessions. He could make an appearance in about 10 days. If he has to throw 60 percent or 70 percent fastballs in an outing, results be damned, it might not look pretty. Maybe that’s what it requires. There will be a lot of attention on Painter, still, even while in the minors.He is that important.“You want it so bad for him,” Cotham said. “Because he’s worked very hard and he’s very dedicated.”