With mustache in tow, Pint's '22 mantra: 'New year, new me'

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The Rockies’ top Draft choice in 2016 (and the No. 4 overall pick), right-handed pitcher Riley Pint has come back to the club wearing a bushy mustache -- one his teammates needle him about and, he says, his girlfriend hates.

But what matters is what’s beneath the bushy brown bristles that ranged from lip corner to lip corner: A big ol' smile.

And when he flashed the smile matters. It was after facing hitters Wednesday morning -- his first such foray since June 2 last year while with High-A Spokane. Shortly thereafter, Pint filed retirement papers and left the club, thereby leaving the organization. Wednesday’s session featured some electric fastballs and sliders, and no more pitches pulled and bounced that anyone else in a first live batting practice. It was a first step in a journey no one can predict.

But Pint (listed at 6-foot-5), who towers above most from a height he says is 6-foot-7, smiled down, so things just may be looking up.

“That’s what I said: 'New year, new me.' And the 'stache comes along with it,” Pint said.

Pint, 24, has a career record of 4-20 with a 5.56 ERA in 68 games, including 40 starts. He has amassed 134 walks, which puts a damper on his 163 strikeouts in 166 2/3 innings.

Before wildness became his story, Pint famously threw 100-plus-mph fastballs while at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kan. His painstaking development was part of "The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports," authored by Jeff Passan. It all led to a $4.8 million signing bonus.

There were extreme difficulties in throwing balls where Pint intended. Although there were a couple of injuries (forearm, oblique) early in his career, the control worried everyone involved. But interestingly, Pint said Wednesday that the poor statistics on the field were less a problem than the sense he had to live up to the velocity and the arm people write books about.

“To be honest, I was kind of happy with the on-the-field stuff,” said Pint, who was 1-0 with a 3.38 ERA in 10 relief appearances covering 10 2/3 innings -- with 17 strikeouts, 10 walks and a hit batter -- at Spokane before leaving the club. “My second-to-last outing, I went two innings and struck out five.

“I just knew something wasn’t right with the entire part of me. I just needed to take some time to find out what that was, what was missing. It was really good to be back with family and just re-center myself. I was all over the board, very scatterbrained all the time. That wasn’t how I wanted to feel.”

Rockies player development director Chris Forbes, the assistant under Zach Wilson at the time Pint left, stayed in touch with Pint.

“I felt when it happened, that wasn’t the end of this,” Forbes said. “Fantastic kid, unbelievable teammate -- guys love him, absolutely adore Riley.

“I knew we would get a phone call.”

But Pint took time to enjoy life before calling to say he was back in.

“I did not throw a single ball until the first time I picked up a ball in December,” Pint said. “I did a lot of traveling. I was in Pinedale, Wyo., for awhile.

"Weird story: my best friend’s parents bought a resort there, so we went. There’s not much there. There’s a resort that’s on a lake, and that’s where we stayed, probably in June or July. We had a couple of other trips. We went to New York City. We went to Vail, [Colo.,] for a week. We hit different spots, me and my girlfriend.”

It was all a part of Pint’s successful quest to “re-find the love” of baseball.

“Riley expressed an interest in coming back, and our staff talked to him a few times,” said Rockies general manager Bill Schmidt, who made the call to take Pint so high in the Draft. “He decided to make a go at it.”

But Pint didn’t commit until after delving into his off-season program. He wanted to know the feelings were real.

Pint enlisted plenty of help. Harvey Martin, a sports psychologist with the Giants, suggested something simple as “just being out in the sunshine.” Throwing sessions with one of Pint's best friends, Tigers' No. 13 prospect Joey Wentz, left him feeling happy with his progress.

Former All-Star catcher Jason Kendall, a neighbor who caught Pint's bullpen sessions going into 2021, gave him valuable, no-nonsense advice.

“He has an old-school way of thinking,” Pint said of Kendall. “That’s how I came back. I’m worried about this, this, this, and he’s telling me, ‘Who cares? Just go out, have fun, play the game again.’"

Pint’s MLB Pipeline rankings topped out at No. 51 overall in 2017, and No. 3 in the Rockies’ system. He wishes he’d cared less then.

“After that first full season in [Class A] Asheville [in 2017], what I wish I would have done differently, I didn’t,” Pint said. “I just kept in that same mode: ‘I need to be this prospect.’ But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter.”

For a sunny Arizona day, all the rankings, hype and stats melted away in the warmth of Pint’s mustachioed smile.