2024 MLB Draft Profile: Gage Ziehl
Draft Profile: Gage Ziehl (Miami)
Height: 6'0
Weight: 210
Bats/Throws: Right/Right
Gage Ziehl — A frequent member of the Miami Hurricanes weekend rotation, is an MLB Draft prospect who may provide some top-100 level upside in this year’s class.
Ziehl features a four pitch mix, consisting of a fastball, slider, changeup, and a cutter.
The first thing to denote on Ziehl’s makeup is that he’s a strike thrower. He can pepper the zone with his pitch mix, with a zone percentage hovering around 50%. He does not let many batters get ahead of him in counts, or inducing walks on him.
Ziehl’s pitch arsenal makeup is bolstered by his secondary pitchers, which includes his slider, which he can flash as a tighter profile or more as a sweeper, depending on the instance, and a commendable 36% whiff rate. The variety in his ability to alter movement profiles presents a challenge to hitters, as does his release point.
The changeup Ziehl flashes is also a plus pitch, which plays well off his over-arching fastball release point to the tune of a 35% whiff rate with its 18 inches of horizontal break. The changeup also only possesses a hard-hit rate of around 14%, so it does a good job of inducing poor contact on Ziehl’s behalf
The biggest intrigue with Ziehl comes with the fastball. The VAA, release point, and combination on Ziehl’s fastball on average (-4.7 VAA, 5.8 rel point, 18 inches of IVB) make it challenging for hitters to get on top of his fastball and to square it up with frequency (only a 13% barrel rate).
While his fastball does not induce significant swing-and-miss in comparison to 2023, it becomes highly effective at inducing poor contact in the top half of the zone. It will also generate swing-and-miss in the top half of the zone with the appearance of ride that it can generate due to that approach angle paired with decent IVB. The flatter VAA is useful because it leads to swings and misses or pop-ups from hitters expecting more vertical drop on the pitch, which can be highly effective when paired with higher velocity levels.
Ziehl’s fastball rarely gets barreled up and tends to produce a lot of pop flies. The contact on it is seldom damaging, with only 2 home runs allowed all season. While it does not produce swing-and-miss at a high level, it can pull out effective swing-and-miss in the top half of the zone thanks to its creative deception.
As a whole, Ziehl is a top 80 player on my board. He throws strikes and has two effective secondaries that he can use. His changeup can work off his fastball to generate a lot of swing-and-miss with drop, and his slider enables him to have a tighter movement that can be thrown for strikes, making it an effective glove-side movement pitch (though he will need to continue working on its adaptive profile as he works through the minor league system, in my opinion). His fastball has traits that will be intriguing for a major league staff, though he will need to adapt to having more comfort with it in the lower half of the zone in terms of frequency and sequencing, as well as using his VAA to create more deception. Ziehl plays into an interesting makeup and is one of the more intriguing arms available.
