Riley Pint was a baby-faced 18-year-old when he first met with Colorado media on June 15, 2016, at Coors Field.

The Rockies’ right-hander, the fourth overall pick in the draft out of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Overland Park, Kan., entered pro baseball with a 102 mph fastball, a $4.8 million signing bonus in his pocket and massive expectations on his shoulders.

“I feel like if I do the things I’m capable of doing, then I can make it to the big leagues pretty quick,” Pint said that day.

Nearly seven years, several injuries, one retirement and one comeback later, Pint is still waiting.

“It’s tougher than you think it’s going to be,” Pint said during spring training. “Coming in at a young age, I didn’t really know who I was as a person. I was still having my laundry done by my mom. Turning pro really was a wake-up call.”

Pint’s story is not a cautionary tale. Rather, it’s a reminder of what an arduous journey it is to travel from the minors to the majors.

Failure is not just an option, it’s an inevitability.

Unlike the NFL or the NBA, where top draft picks almost always enter the league right away and often make an immediate impact, it takes time and hardship to develop a major leaguer.

Since the major league draft began in June 1965, only 23 players have gone straight to the majors. Awaiting the rest? A years-long climb through the minors that many of them will never complete.

When the Rockies open their 2023 season Thursday against the Padres at Petco Park, every player on the 26-man roster — from four-time All-Star Charlie Blackmon to rookie third baseman Elehuris Montero — will carry baggage from their own journey. It’s part of what puts a lump in the throat and makes opening day so special.

‘Embrace the suck’

Colorado second baseman Brendan Rodgers, likely to miss the entire season after undergoing shoulder surgery, was the third overall player selected in the 2015 amateur draft. Now 26, he recalls his minor-league days through a bitter-sweet lens.

“I think my longest bus ride was 12 or 13 hours from Grand Junction, where I played in rookie league, to Billings, Mont.,” said Rodgers, who was drafted at 18 out of Florida’s Lake Mary High School.

“Man, it was rough,” he said with a laugh. “You feel horrible and you’re stiff from the long ride. The only place you stop is at a gas station to get your food. So you load up on beef jerky and snacks. It’s hard to stay healthy and hard to stay in shape. It’s baseball from a different perspective, for sure.”

Rodgers and his Grand Junction teammates leaned on each other and adopted a slogan from the Navy Seals.

“We used to say, ‘Embrace the suck,’ ” Rogers said. “That’s kind of how you have to look at it. There are going to be good times and there are going to be times when you wonder, ‘Did I pick the right profession?’ “

In 2016, playing for low-A Asheville, Rodgers befriended outfielder Yonathan Daza. They made for unlikely buddies: Rodgers, who received a $5.5 million signing bonus, and Daza, who grew up on the violent streets of Caña de Azúcar, a section of Maracy, Venezuela. Daza’s older brother was shot and killed when Daza was just nine years old.

Despite the language barrier, they bonded quickly. Rodgers began donating baseball equipment to Daza, who shipped it back to family and friends in Venezuela. It’s a practice Rodgers continues to this day.

“I kind of took it upon myself to study the (Latin) culture, because I knew we were all teammates going through tough times in the minors,” Rodgers said. “I was young and I was a bonus baby — whatever you want to call me — and I knew I was going to be playing with a lot of these guys throughout my career. I just wanted to be friends with them.”

Rodgers and Daza commiserated through the inevitable slumps.

“As a young player, you feel like a failure if you go 0-for-4,” Daza said. “When you finally get here to America, it’s hard to (understand) that. You expect to be good every night because you want to get on the big-league team as fast as you can.”

But according to Major League Baseball, the average time a player spends in the minor leagues is about 21/2 years. But that’s only for the players who actually make The Show. Only 10% of minor leaguers ever play a game in the majors, according to More Than Baseball, a non-profit organization that supports minor league players.

Even for those players selected early in the draft, the failure rate in baseball is high when compared to the other major North American professional sports. From 2000-17, only 64.53% of first- and second-round draft picks ever played in the majors. In the NFL, that number is 99.39% (1,136 of 1,443), in the NBA it’s 85.87% (918 of 1,069) and in the NHL it’s 80.72% (900 of 1,115).

In baseball, even being the first player selected by a team is not a guaranteed ticket to The Show. From 1992-2017, 20 of the Rockies’ first 26 selections made the majors, just 76.9%.

Rockies general manager Bill Schmidt, who headed the club’s scouting department for more than 20 years, says that baseball is simply a different animal than the other major sports.

“Baseball is so hard to master,” he said. “Sure, a guy can throw hard but can he throw it where he needs to throw it? Guys can hit a baseball in high school or college, but it’s very different at this level.

“It’s all about developing the skills. Guys start out having the tools, but eventually, they have to develop skills. It takes time, and patience, to do that.”

The developmental road is full of potholes and hazards: injuries, immaturity, loss of confidence, the minor-league grind, and a player’s realization that he’s simply not good enough.

“There is a mental toughness that’s needed to make it,” Schmidt said. “You deal with failure so much that if you are not mentally tough, the game will spit you out. And you have to have a passion for it. You have to truly love the game.”