Los Angeles Angels prospect Nicolo Pinazzi throws hard, and he certainly does know how to turn a phrase.
Every team in MLB has its share of characters, especially among its prospects, and the Los Angeles Angels are no exception. The international player pool is especially good for this sort of thing, and one of the best examples is minor league reliever Nicolo Pinazzi, who says he wants to throw 105 mph and “play like my head is on fire.”
We’ll give you a second to catch your breath as you catch up to that sentence to note that the report on the reliever was written by Rob Terranova of MLB.com. As you might suspect from the wording, Pinazzi wasn’t born in the US, and as a native of Milan, Italy he hasn’t quite mastered some of the nuances of American English, particularly the sports vernacular version.
But the 26-year old reliever is doing a pretty good version of picking up the whole pitching thing. According to Terranova, Pinazzi climbed three levels of the Angels system, finishing the year with 13 games for the Double-A Rocket City Trash Pandas, and he helped the team win the Southern League Championship.
Pinazzi is 6’2” and 195 pounds, and he pitched from May 21 through Sept. 4 without allowing an earned run. That stretch encompassed 31 appearances and 43 innings across three levels, so his season has been something of a whirlwind tour.
More numbers are worth reviewing. Pinazzi put up 76 strikeouts while posting a 1.05 WHIP and .169 average against. It’s the longest streak by a pitcher without allowing an earned run in the minor leagues since 2016, according to Terranova, and the longest by a southpaw since 2007.
Pinazzi said the turning point for him this year was being able to throw his fastball up in the zone more frequently for strikes, which laid a foundation for his offspeed pitches to have greater success.
Confidence played into it as well, and that’s where the comments get particularly colorful. Pinazzi told Terranova that he tells himself to “play like my head is on fire.” His stated goal is throw at 105 mph, which should be an interesting quest.
Pinazzi is also one of those characters who likes to give his pitches specific names. He doesn’t call his cutter a cutter because if he does that he doesn’t throw it the way he’s “supposed to,” so he calls it a “bullet slider” instead.
It’s become his bread-and-butter pitch, and Pinazzi throws it about 70 percent of the time. The reliever says he trusts it them most of all his pitches, and Pinazzi added that he’ll “die on the hill” with it. It should be an interesting spring to see if PInazzi can actually make it to the hill for the Angels as he continues to progress.
