My thoughts exactly. Many moons ago, when I was a pitcher, my coach would call it a chase pitch, not a waste pitch. Off the plate 3 inches or so. If they don't swing and it gets called a ball, that's fine.Depends on what you consider to be a waste pitch.
I do believe in calling a pitch that is suppose to miss the strike zone by 2-3 inches inside or outside. That would not be a waste pitch IMO. Depending on the game some umpires will call a pitch that misses closely a strike.
For the most part I do not believe in calling a pitch that is supposed to miss by 8 inches, that is waste pitch. There are some times where a waste pitch can be effective but this would be if you had a play called in advance. You can throw a pitch 8 inches outside to a right handed batter if you think you can back pick a runner off of first base. That would be one scenario where I could see calling a real waste pitch. Certainly more scenario for a waste pitch but most of them have to do more with the base runner than the actual batter. Pitchouts would be another example but rare in softball.
I do not think Maddux was talking about the above paragraph in definition of Waste Pitches.