Last night Painter got up to 93 pitches according to the rolling box. Clearly there is a "ramp up to 100 pitches" part of keeping him in A ball also. I do think the plan is to give him every opportunity to come up next year. He may be good enough that he really does not need AAA time. The challenge is getting him to 100 pitches in a harder environment while also developing his change and other pitches.
I am a little agnostic on innings limits. As long as they don't overextend him then I am not sure 100 vs 120 means too much. They already did the midseason break for him. If they got him to AA and AAA and limited him to 3-inning outings I'd be fine with that too. Certainly they would ease back on the pitch limit to maybe 80 at the end. Just not sure it matters whether he pitches a few more than 100 total innings as long as there are not too many high stress innings in there.
