Kalispell's Pistorese finishes season on top

The season was not yet two months old, but Joe Pistorese had already reached its low point at the end of May.

He was nearing the end of his second stint on the disabled list in three weeks, and reality was setting in.

He was bound for Peoria, Arizona, home of the Seattle Mariners’ spring training facility, and the dread of his forthcoming trip had nothing to do with the overbearing summer temperatures he was to encounter. Instead, Pistorese’s unease was a product of the pain in his arm that had forced him on the disabled list and now was sending him to Peoria, where he would be forced to spend more than a month away from his team — the Class A Advanced Modesto Nuts — rehabbing his throwing arm back to full health.

“I was just irritated,” Pistorese, a 2011 Flathead grad, recalled recently. “You put in all this work to prepare for the season, so to run into an injury after all that work, it can be easy to get down on yourself.”

But as disheartening as the middle months of the season were for Pistorese, the end of the year was equally as sweet.

The left-handed pitcher recovered from his injuries and was a key contributor down the stretch for the Nuts, who did not lose a game in the playoffs en route to the California League championship.

“The beginning of the year, I was putting in all that work and I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted to,” Pistorese said. “There was a point in the middle of the year where it was kind of like I tucked my tail between my legs and pushed forward. It was nice to have a little bit of success at the end of the year.”

Pistorese’s optimism abounded entering the 2017 season.

The previous year — the second of his professional baseball career — brought a late-season promotion to the Class A Advanced team, and an invitation to major league spring training followed in the offseason.

Pistorese arrived to spring training early with the hope of getting into peak shape by season’s start. He thought he had done just that at the time, but given the benefit of hindsight, he says there are things he would have done differently.

“I thought getting down there early was enough, but I think if I were to do it again, I would just make sure that I was paying attention to detail,” Pistorese said. “You’ve got to learn how hard to push yourself in preparation for the season, and I think that’s something I’m still struggling with a little bit. For the most part, when I was preparing, I was throwing until my arm felt good and then I was calling it. I thought that was good.”

As Pistorese soon learned, it was not enough.

His first brush with injury landed him on the 7-day disabled list in mid-May. Pistorese started his first game back on May 26th, allowing just two hits in one inning of work. But he knew something was not right.

The 6-foot-2 lefty was placed on the disabled list again on May 31, and the club issued an ultimatum — if Pistorese wasn’t healthy in a week, he would fly from California to Arizona to begin a rehab program that would last at least a month.

“I was going to do whatever I possibly could in those seven days to avoid going to Arizona,” he said. “At the end of it, there was nothing I could do. I wasn’t where I needed to be. Once I realized the next probably month or so was going to be spent in Arizona trying to get back to the team I was with, that was probably the lowest point of the year.”

Pistorese ventured south to Peoria — ironically, the same place where he’d reported early to spring training and been so hopeful just months before — unsure of what was to come.

He said he’d never before dealt with an injury serious enough to force him to miss more than a series — not in youth baseball, nor during his American Legion days with the Kalispell Lakers, not even during his college career at Washington State.

The entire rehab experience was foreign.

“There were definitely some learning points throughout the year, but overall, I’m happy with how I battled through it,” Pistorese said. “You just try to stay optimistic, really. It’s a really long year, so if you start getting down on yourself, that year can spiral out of control.

“Playing as many games as we do, it’s easy to lose yourself a little bit.”

After a trying rehab process that included two outings with the Rookie League’s AZL Mariners, Pistorese returned to the Nuts on July 15 with two innings of one-hit, shutout ball.

He encountered speed bumps as he acclimated to Class A Advanced play, to be sure.

Pistorese surrendered six runs without recording an out in his second game back from injury and gave up six total runs in his next six appearances.

“It’s rough, for sure,” Pistorese said. “Obviously, you put in all this work every day. You put in 100 percent, and to not necessarily see results in the amount of time you were hoping for is tough on you. You can be hard on yourself pretty easy in this game.”

Late in the season, Pistorese found his form.

He closed the year with seven consecutive scoreless outings, allowing just four hits over a combined 9 1/3 innings.

He was also stellar in the postseason, allowing only one run and no runs over 3 1/3 total innings in three playoff appearances.

Pistorese’s last outing of the season was particularly special.

He was credited with the win in Modesto’s 8-5 victory over the Lancaster JetHawks in Game 2 of the championship series, a sweet ending to a season once mired in disappointment.

The Nuts went on to win Game 3 off the series, capping off a 6-0 run through the postseason.

“It’s always easier to be on a winning team,” Pistorese said. “The morale, just everything about that team is fun to be around. It’s easier to go to the field.

“To have a reward at the end of the year, like a ring, after you went through all that is huge motivation for the oncoming season.”

Pistorese’s focus is now squarely on the 2018 season and, more generally, the future.

When he signed with the Mariners organization back in June 2015, he sat in bed one night and jotted down a four-year plan of development. Three years in, Pistorese says he’s happy with his progress.

“In a perfect world,” he said, he spends 2018, his age 25 season, developing at the Double A level — without injury, ideally — before making a serious push for an MLB roster spot in 2019.

But if there’s anything Pistorese learned from the 2017 season, it’s that things don’t always go according to plan. And that’s fine with him.

“The first two years of pro ball is a great time for people to learn themselves,” he said. “You do your best not to make any mistakes. But then, when you do make mistakes, you’ve got to make sure you’re learning from them so you don’t repeat them.

“That’s what I’ve tried to do. I’m not going to be perfect throughout the year, and as much as I try, my throwing program is not going to be perfect. But as long as I can take some good away from the bad, I can move forward.”