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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: 1ST ROUND POOL DMarch 9, 2017Marco MazzieriZapopan, Jalisco, México Q. Do you think this is the most important game that you will have in this WBC? MARCO MAZZIERI: Well, when you play in a tournament like this, the first game is always very important, but what we're trying to do is to make it not crucial because then it puts more pressure on the guys. We just need to play a game, baseball game, and minimize mistakes to maximize results, and that's what we're looking for. Q. Why did you choose Maestri to be your starting pitcher today? MARCO MAZZIERI: Because he has experience to pitch in big games. He's done it before, and we feel he's our No. 1 guy. Q. Do you think the Italian team could be the surprise because you have many Italian-American players in the roster? Israel is a surprise in this World Baseball Classic? MARCO MAZZIERI: Well, I think everybody has double-passport players. If you think of the Netherlands, they have most of those players from Aruba and Curazao, so what we're looking for is to have good players, and if they're eligible to play, we're going to use them just like everybody else does. If we are going to be the surprise, I don't know, but I always feel like we are the underdogs all the time, and we like proving people wrong because these guys have a lot of heart. They have passion. They have determination, courage, resiliency, and we just like what we have, and we're just going to play to win every single pitch. Now, are we going to do it? I don't know, but that's where our head is going to be? Q. What about (indiscernible)? He will be an important piece for the Italian team? MARCO MAZZIERI: Well, first of all, my first time with Alex is 2003, and I remember him as a 14-year-old going into the Babe Ruth World Series with the cadet national team for Team Italy that I was managing, and I've been working with him for all his career. He trained while he was in Italy, he was training with me during the winter. He's been part of the junior national team. He's been part of the senior national team. And he's just a good player and a great -- I love the guy because he likes to put his heart in there, and he's always willing to give it all up for us. Q. Just to ask you, probably Alex didn't mention to you that the ball flies high in this park. It's a park with very high risk for pitchers, especially with not only México but Venezuela and Puerto Rico also have great hitters. How are you considering to handle your pitchers so you don't have damage on the field from the offense? MARCO MAZZIERI: Well, again, I think the players that we are going to face in this bracket are all very good hitters, so I don't think that matters that much, how much the ball flies here. Miguel Cabrera and Adrian Gonzales and all those boys, they're big boys, so they're going to hit it out no matter what. It's hard to control that. I think if you don't pitch as good as you can, you're going to get hurt, and that's all you can do. So we are going to try to make good pitches, and hopefully we'll get ours. That's what it is. You can't really control the ball flying out here, and especially, again, with all those teams that I feel like they have All-Star teams. Again, I'm sorry to repeat myself, but we can't really look at the other teams. We've just got to make sure that we execute what our plan is and go from there. The good players will find a way. We're just trying to short the damage, if you pass me the word. Q. Can I talk to you about some players playing in México because of the knowledge of Mexican baseball? MARCO MAZZIERI: There are players here that are players that know it very well. What we're trying to do is play the best we can and possibly the other players help everybody because if we are trying to win, everybody has to do their best they can do. Q. How different is your team compared to when you were in Phoenix and beat México? MARCO MAZZIERI: Three years is a lot of years ago. Here is a different team, and México is a different team. I believe that we have talent, we have youth, and we are honored to be here and play for Italy. Q. What do you think about the Mexican pitching? MARCO MAZZIERI: The Mexican pitching speaks for itself. It's a strong team, and what we're going to do is try to do what we can do. We know how good they are, the Mexican pitchers, and what we should do is try to play 100 percent to the best of our abilities, and we can only control that. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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