Pitching prospect Gage Ziehl was traveling Sunday from Florida to Arizona, heading to White Sox spring training camp when he found out the Red Sox traded for him.
“Literally the plane wheels had just gotten up in the air, and I got a message,” Ziehl said.
Boston received Ziehl and a player to be named later in a trade that sent reliever Jordan Hicks, prospect David Sandlin and two players to be named later to the White Sox.
The White Sox train in Phoenix. Ziehl had to remain on the flight for another five hours knowing he was just going to fly right back to Florida.
The 22-year-old righty, who’s listed at 6-foot, 223 pounds, had also shipped his car to Arizona a couple days before.
“So that was fun,” he said.
He wasn’t in Arizona long. He boarded a plane to Fort Myers the next day and had his car shipped back.
“The Red Sox coordinated a flight for me. So that was nice.”
Baseball America had Ziehl ranked the White Sox’ No. 21 overall prospect. In 2025, Ziehl posted a 4.12 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 90 strikeouts and 19 walks in 22 outings (21 starts) between Low-A, High-A and Double-A.
Control and command are strengths. He has averaged just 1.6 walks per nine innings in his first pro season after averaging 2.6 in his 227 ⅔ innings at Miami.
An eventful Sunday marked the second time Ziehl has been traded in his brief career. The Yankees initially drafted him in the fourth round (119th overall) out of Miami in 2024. New York traded him to Chicago on July 30, 2025, for outfielder Austin Slater.
Baseball America ranked the righty as the Yankees’ 13th overall prospect entering the 2025 season.
“I definitely would say it was a little easier (than the first time being traded),” Ziehl said. “It’s definitely not easy, per se, but sometimes you just got to go with the flow.”
Ziehl’s two best pitches are his sweeper and cutter. Baseball America grades his sweeper 55 (above average) on its 20-80 grading scale and his cutter 50 (major league average). The prospect website noted in his scouting report: “Ziehl relies on his mid-80s sweeper and 89 mph cutter, throwing those two pitches nearly 70% of the time with near-even distribution. His sweeper has above-average spin rates and is his best swing-and-miss offering.”
Ziehl said he began throwing his sweeper in high school and continued to throw it his first two years at Miami. But he lost feel for it during his final year with the Hurricanes and changed to a regular slider.
He returned to the sweeper during his first full season of professional baseball in 2025.
“I kind of lost feel for it, to be honest and I don’t know why,” he said. “It could have been a mechanical thing. But yeah, I was able to bring it back last year, thankfully.”
He learned his cutter during his brief time in the Yankees organization.
“Honestly, I think it (cutter) grades out the best out of all my pitches,” he said. “But they both have a lot of glove-side movement. And really with the cutter, it’s a huge weak-contact and ground-ball-inducing pitch for me, which has helped me out like tremendously against left-handed hitters. And then my sweeper has just been a good weapon against righties. I don’t throw it too much against lefties.”
He threw his fastball only 13% of the time in 2025, according to Baseball America. But he has made some adjustments to it, which might result in him throwing it more often in 2026.
“Last year, we were trying to make it a cut-ride fastball and get the vert up a little bit,” Ziehl said. “What that ended up doing is just causing me to cut the ball more. And so that’s why the percentage on it was so low is because it was basically a worse version of my cutter. And I attribute that to my trunk tilt just getting me into this position that I would cut everything a little more than I wanted.”
He worked on mechanics at Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida this offseason to decrease the cut on his fastball.
“Being a little bit taller … which has helped me get a better approach angle and made my fastball not cut like it did last year,” Ziehl said.
His fastball last year had about 15 inches of vertical movement and was right on the zero horizontal line. He said his fastball now is anywhere from 14-17 inches vertically and eight horizontally.
“The approach angle should be a lot better than it was last year,” he said.
He said his velocity was down last year probably because of how infrequently he threw it.
“I was barely throwing it,” he said. “But back in college, I sat around 93 my last year. And I think with where I’m at right now, I’ll probably be around there just because I’ll be able to be a little bit more behind the ball instead of around it and cutting it like I was last year.”
Ziehl also mixes in a changeup and curveball. Like the cutter, he also learned the curveball while with the Yankees.
“They’re mostly used towards left-handed hitters, but I do occasionally mix them in to right-handed hitters,” Ziehl said. “Curveball was something that I brought up to my pitching coach with the Yankees last year, kind of midway through the season.”
Ziehl realized his three main pitches all moved toward the same side of the plate, so he suggested trying a curveball.
“I’m like, ‘Why not try and throw a curveball and just see where it goes?’” he said. “And it’s been a good pitch for me. I think it sits around negative-seven on the vert, which has helped me get under some bats of lefties.”
He said he has been tinkering with his kick changeup.
“It gets really good numbers when I get it around the zone,” he said. “It was a little bit difficult last year with where my slot was, just locating it. But right now, I feel with the work that I put in in the offseason with the coaches over at Cressey, that it’ll be a really good pitch for me and probably a pitch that’ll get a lot more usage this year.”