Rockies say former first-round pick Riley Pint, who made KC history, has retired
Nearly five years to the day he was selected in the first round of the Major League Baseball draft, Riley Pint has retired from professional baseball, the Colorado Rockies announced Tuesday.
On June 9, 2016, the Colorado Rockies used the fourth overall pick to select Pint, the former St. Thomas Aquinas star pitcher. It was the highest a Kansas City-area player had been drafted.
Blessed with a right arm capable of throwing 100 mph fastballs, Pint’s future seemed bright. But Pint, 23, was beset by injuries. He made just four appearances in the 2018 season because of a forearm stiffness and then an oblique injury.
“I never really understood what an oblique was until I strained it, and then it was like you use your oblique for everything,” Pint told MiLB.com in 2019. “It did (stink) because you’re coming back, coming back, making some starts, and then all of a sudden, you get hurt again.
“It’s just a learning process. You’ve got to learn to keep your body healthy throughout the season. For me, it’s just going out there and continuing to build strength and be healthy.”
In 2019, Pint shifted from a starting role to the bullpen but appeared in only 21 games for Class A Asheville, throwing 17 2/3 innings. He didn’t have a chance to pitch in 2020 because the minor-league season was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pint, who is 6 foot 5 and 225 pounds, was pitching this season for Class A-Advanced Spokane and had a 3.38 ERA in 10 appearances.
Zach Wilson, the Rockies assistant general manager of player development, said “some personal decisions” led to Riley’s retirement.
“We want to support Riley right now (with) where he’s at in his life,” Wilson said on MLB.com. “And we’ll certainly support him as to the next several weeks and months and years. We drafted him and he spent a lot of time here.
“We’ve worked very hard with him, so just because he’s decided to step away doesn’t mean that we’re going to cut that off at all.”
Pint, who received a $4.8 million signing bonus with the Rockies, appeared in 68 games (40 starts) with a 5.56 ERA in his career. He had 163 strikeouts and 134 walks in 166 2/3 innings.
