BALLS MOVEMENT WBC
Alessandro Maestri, Team Italy
While the Italian team is mostly composed of American-born players of Italian descent, Alessandro (Alex) Maestri was born and raised in Italy and has now become the first such player to make it to Double-A. Despite being just 23 last year, Maestri has been pitching for the Italian National team since 2006. The Cubs signed Maestri that year and he has been pitching pretty well in the minors since. Here is a look at his movement chart.
Maestri’s best pitch is his fastball, which he throws around 93 mph with solid movement. The confusing stuff is his off-speed pitches. My algorithm is calling the five pitches to the right curveballs and the one pitch in the middle a slider, despite the slider having more vertical movement down than the curve. The reason for this is the curves came in around 77 mph and the slider was thrown at 83 mph. We need more statistics on Maestri to straighten this out, but whatever you want to call his main off-speed pitch, it is slow and slurvy. Maestri likes to begin the at-bat with that pitch, throwing it three times in just seven batters.
Hei is still quite young and has a lot to work on, especially his off-speed pitches, but he has the talent to be a solid bullpen arm in the future.