The two ballplayers had never met before arriving in Dunedin, Fla., swapping out Italy’s azzurri blue for the Blue Jays’ shade. But now Giaconino Lasaracina and Giacomo Taschin are together. Not just as teammates and road trip roomies for the Single-A ballclub, though: They just might be the first all-Italian developed battery in affiliated baseball history.
“It’s funny: We never faced each other in Italy,” Lasaracina told MLB.com, with Javier Román translating. “I knew him because he was playing for the Italian U-18s, but we were always in different groups. But when I signed with the Blue Jays, he was one of the first people to send me a text and congratulate me.”
It’s also helped the duo communicate more easily, too: Taschin speaks Italian and English; Lasaracina Spanish and Italian.
“I have a guy I can speak Italian with, even when we’re in the game,” Taschin said. “If I need some advice, we can speak Italian without problems. He’s a great guy and we talk a lot, even outside of baseball.”
Forget covering their mouths with their mitts during mound visits, too. It's like they have a secret language.
“We know that nobody speaks Italian, so I can tell him a couple words in Italian,” Lasaracina joked.
Though they now share a locker room and a language, their paths to the Minors couldn’t have been more different. For both, getting noticed meant relying upon an idea that Italian national team manager and former big leaguer Francisco Cervelli has preached across the country: “You never know who’s watching.”
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Standing a muscular 6-foot-3 and 210 pounds, Lasaracina cuts an imposing figure at the dish. He’s shown off that power recently, hitting the longest home run in Dunedin Blue Jays Statcast history with a 457-foot, 112.4 mph blast last week. It was his first of two homers in the game, but the catcher thinks his second was actually the more impressive of the two no matter what the numbers say.
“I felt that I hit it hard, but I didn’t know it was that long,” Lasaracina said. “In fact, I thought my second homer was a little longer because it went higher. But honestly, at that moment, I felt really happy because that was my plan. And the moment you have a plan and can execute it, you feel really good.”
Watching that blast, you’d assume that Lasaracina had scouts drooling over him from the day he first picked up a bat. But growing up in Carupano, Venezuela, Lasaracina was surrounded by plenty of other baseball prodigies. When he realized scouts weren’t interested in him as a teenager, he was left with few options.
“My parents were the ones that kept pushing me forward to keep practicing,” Lasaracina said. “At one point, I was like, ‘I don't want to practice anymore.’ But my parents told me, ‘No, keep ready, be prepared, because you never know who's watching you.”
It was good advice. Thanks to a tip from a friend living in Italy, he sent a video of himself taking swings and playing all over the field -- first, third, behind the plate. Settimo, in Italy’s Serie A, liked what they saw and quickly installed the then-18-year-old in its lineup.
“One of the teams there in Italy took the chance on me,” Lasaracina said. “And thank God for that.”
Despite his youth -- and like Ted Williams all those decades ago -- he hit .406 to pace the team. (One of his teammates that season, Williams Wong, signed with the Rangers as a 17-year-old the next year.)
Lasaracina continued to improve over the years, culminating in a breakout at the 2025 European Baseball Championship. Making his senior national team debut, Lasaracina slashed .481/.516/1.185 with a tournament-leading six home runs. The performance cemented Lasaracina in the national team’s plans and the 22-year-old was preparing to play in this spring’s World Baseball Classic when the Blue Jays came calling.
“Every time I remember [getting the offer from the Blue Jays], I get so happy because it was something totally unexpected,” Lasaracina said. “By then, I was already 22 years old, and usually they look for 16- or 17-year-olds. They almost never sign 18-year-olds, so at 20-plus years old, it's very difficult.”
While Lasaracina took a winding path from Venezuela to Serie A, Taschin's experience was, by European standards at least, much more direct.
He was born in the ancient town of Rovigo, a city of about 50,000 in northeast Italy. Italy may be the land of soccer, but Taschin’s father and older brother were ballplayers, ensuring that Taschin’s future was on the ballfield.
“It started with my Dad and my brother playing baseball,” Taschin said. “I always had a partner, so I could play catch with someone.”
The left-hander caught scout’s attention when he won the MVP at the 2024 U-18 European Baseball Championship. Playing as a two-way player, he hit .333 with one home run and eight RBIs, while posting a remarkable 1.00 ERA and striking out 22 batters in 14 innings. Perhaps more impressive -- especially for a young pitcher -- he walked only three.
All of that led to this spring when Taschin officially signed with the Blue Jays as a 19-year-old. There was just one catch: He was still in high school.
“It was kind of weird because when I signed, I came here to Florida for one week to see the complex and then meet the coaches,” Taschin said. “Then after I signed here and after my medical, I had to come back to Italy to finish high school.”
Forget senior-itis, Taschin had to spend his last three weeks of school preparing to become a professional ballplayer.
“They were surprised, because for us,” Taschin said about his high school friends, "MLB is something new, something [very unexpected] for Italy.”
The hope is that novelty is rapidly changing. There’s Sam Aldegheri, the Angels pitcher who became the first Italian-developed pitcher in MLB history, and has seen big league action in each of the last three seasons. He’s provided a blueprint for Italian ballplayers to follow.
“He played against my brother, so I’m going to say yes: If he made the Majors, I can make the Majors,” Taschin said with a smile. “I can see that Aldegheri is in a good spot, which gives me a chance.”
Though much of the roster consisted of Americans with Italian heritage, the national team’s semifinal run in this spring’s World Baseball Classic reached the sporting newspapers back in Italy and the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, mentioned their success in a speech to parliament.
“The very beautiful thing was that this was a united team, and I think that made the difference,” Taschin said. “Italians liked the representation from the guys over there, like the coffee machine and all the celebrations they did. I think the light was turned on after the World Baseball Classic.”
The dream, as espoused by Cervelli and national team captain Vinnie Pasquantino, is that in 20 years, the national team will be filled with players like Lasaracina and Taschin instead of Americans with heritage.
To help build that future, Cervelli now lives and works in Italy for half the year. In addition to the senior Italian team, he manages the U-23 squad, has an academy in Castiglione della Pescaia and helps coach Florence’s Serie A club. He’s referred to himself as a truck driver, motoring up and down the country, to find players like the Blue Jays' duo and help develop them.
He’s seen the impact that the World Baseball Classic has already had on the youth in the nation and he hopes to keep driving it.
“It’s huge. In Italy, a lot of people talk about it,” Cervelli said while the team was at Haarlem Honkbalweek earlier this summer. “I think it's the first time -- and the players felt it -- that they want to represent Italy in the WBC, because that's the biggest tournament, so that's what we're preparing for. I hope I can bring more guys from here to the WBC. They play good baseball, I’ve got an amazing team, and we're growing.”
It helped inspire Taschin, too.
“I think the dream of every player in Italy is to represent the country on the big stage and in international competitions,” Taschin said. “If Team Italy called me, I would say yes every time, because it's my dream. To play for my country, it’s one of the best things that you can do as a baseball player.”
For Lasaracina, the impact is even more immediate. While the catcher credits Cervelli with help on some techniques behind the plate, the much more important lesson was the mental element.
“Francisco told me, ‘Control whatever you can control,’” Lasaracina said. “The external stuff that you can’t control? Just forget about it. Be you and be prepared.”
That’s good advice for any ballplayer, but for players from non-traditional baseball countries, it’s all the more necessary. It may be a more difficult path to forge, but when the opportunity arrives, you need to be ready to take it.
“I’m an old person for the system,” Lasaracina said, “but I never give up. I keep practicing. I tell everyone, keep working hard, keep getting those chances and be able to play in any leagues: Double-A, independent leagues, semiprofessional. You never know who’s going to see you, and you need to be ready for that moment.”