WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: QUARTERFINALS - ITALY VS JAPAN

March 16, 2023

Vinnie Pasquantino

Tokyo Dome

Team Italy

Pregame Press Conference

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: Before I take questions, first I just want to thank MLB and FOX and all their staff for what they have done. Just little things like the photographers, Joe, he came with us to Italy last fall, and he's been with us. He wasn't with Team Italy, but he was in Taichung City in Taiwan as well.

I want to thank MLB for putting on this event and hopefully you guys giving us first-class treatment. It's been great. We've still got a game tonight and we are not done yet but we are really excited to play. I just wanted to thank all of you guys for being here, all the staff, everybody for treating us so great. We are excited to still be here.

Q. So now the quarterfinal, it's a do-or-die, winner takes all. What's in your mind?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: That's it. Pretty simple mindset. Just go in here and try to play a really good game and give whatever we can to win this ballgame and try to make it Miami.

Q. What's the atmosphere of Team Italy heading into the quarterfinals?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: Well, if you were to look at any rankings prior to the tournament, we were not supposed to be here, so our mindset is the same and that's just keep trying to play spoiler and keep knocking down favorites as much as we can. That's the mindset.

We are a loose group. We are excited to be here but we are professionals at the same time with the expectation that we are going to go in and play a good game and see what happens.

Q. Tonight, you play against Japan and their starter is Shohei Ohtani and you probably saw the advance scouting. How does Team Italy approach against him?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: I can't really talk about it. I don't think he would talk about what he's doing against us. Maybe he is but that's for us, and hopefully it works out; and if it doesn't maybe I should have told you what we're going to do.

Yeah, he's one of the best in the world. I would argue he's the face of baseball right now and we are really excited to face him at home and see what it's all about.

Q. In order to clinch the quarterfinal, what's the game plan for Team Italy?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: So if you were following us in Pool A our last game we had to win by a certain amount of runs. To be honest that was a little more stressful because we had to plan out the game a little bit more. Our plan tonight is to win. We can win by one; we can win by two; we can win by three. Doesn't matter, if we win, we advance.

For us, it's simple. We are just focused on scoring more runs than them and we are going to do everything we can to make that happen.

Q. You said that you guys were eager to keep playing spoiler and keep knocking out the favorite teams. Does that kind of mood of being the spoiler, being the team that no one sort of expected to be here bring the team closer together? Is that like a motivating factor for you guys?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: I think so. It's a little bit easier when nobody expects you to win because there's to pressure.

Yeah, I think it's closer because of how exciting it is. We were not supposed to make it out of Pool A and we were not supposed to win this game and for us that's more exciting because we believe in ourselves. So if nobody else does, we've got each other's backs and that's what's really exciting is it does bring us closer because we can just talk about how, yeah, who cares, we can just go out there and do it. It's baseball. Anything can happen in one game.

So I've said it a few times, I'm sorry for saying the same thing over but we are just really excited to get this going. It's a good group and we are excited for what's to come, and that can start tonight?

Q. You just made a major league debut last season. It is such an important time right now for you because it's just before the opening series for the MLB 2023. It's important but what made you decide to join the WBC playing for Italy?

VINNIE PASQUANTINO: Any time you get an opportunity to represent an entire country, especially on this type of stage, it's hard to say no. That was really where it came down to for most guys on this team. The federation in Italy, the baseball federation, FIBS, they are creating something special, and they are bringing Italian Americans to be a part of it. We have heritage in Italy. We are really excited about that heritage, and they are letting us come be a part of what they are building, and we are really excited about it.

Advancing to the next round really helps with what they are doing; advancing to Miami would help a lot more. We are just really excited that they are bringing us in. This isn't something that we are doing just because. This is something that we are trying to build, the same way the excitement here in Japan is for the Japan national team, we would like it to be like that in Italy as well and try to build something bigger for the leagues in Italy.

We are excited. We heard we are on SKY Sports which apparently is the biggest sporting TV station in Italy and we heard we had made the news on there and that's what we are trying to accomplish. When we went to Italy, we saw how passionate they were for soccer, or football as they call it. That's what we want to do for baseball in Italy and this is the first step and we are excited to hopefully continue on that journey and make people in America who we're associated with proud and especially the people in Italy, make them proud to be associated with us.

This is kind of a weird opportunity to take this but thank you to FIBS for everything they have provided to us because they have made all all of this realistic and we are excited to represent them and it feels like they are excited for us to be doing that. Thank you to them. It was an easy yes to play for this team.