Josh Zeid

In his senior year in high school he was named Gatorade Connecticut High School Player of the Year, and Baseball America ranked him the nation's 27th-best prospect.

That year, he was the Gatorade Connecticut High School Player of the Year, Baseball America ranked him the country's 27th-best prospect, and he was a Louisville Slugger, National High School Baseball Coaches Association, Collegiate Baseball, and Street & Smith All American.

He played for the Long Island Titans in the summer of his senior year.

They finished 43–5.

He earned two varsity letters in basketball.

He played college baseball, pitching for the Vanderbilt Commodores baseball team for two years, and then for Tulane University, where he pitched for the Green Wave baseball team and was an English major.

Joshua Alexander Zeid (ג'וש זייד; born March 24, 1987) is an American-Israeli former professional baseball pitcher and current coach.

He plays for Team Israel.

He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Houston Astros.

Zeid played for the gold-medal-winning Team USA Youth National Team in 2003.

He played for the gold-medal-winning Team USA Youth National Team in 2003, and was an AFLAC All American in 2004.

In his junior and senior years he led his high school team to two straight New England Championships, and a record of 54–15.

In his junior year in 2004, he struck out 68 batters in 42 innings and had a 1.66 ERA, while batting .412.

In his senior year, he struck out 130 batters in 65.0 innings and batted .450, and was team captain.

Zeid was a pitcher for the Hornets at Hamden Hall Country Day School (2005), where he had 400 strikeouts, a school record.

In addition to pitching, he played first base, shortstop, and center field.

He also pitched for the Torrington Twisters of the New England Collegiate Baseball League in 2006, and for the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod Collegiate Baseball League in 2007.

He was drafted in the 10th round of the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft, and in 2010 he was named a South Atlantic League midseason All-Star, and won the MiLB Best Reliever (Class A–Full Season) Award.

He was drafted out of Tulane by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 10th round of the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft as a starter.

Zeid received a $10,000 signing bonus.

He pitched as a starter for the Class A Williamsport Crosscutters, and had an 8–5 record with a 2.94 ERA, holding batters to a .217 average.

In 2010, he pitched for the Lakewood BlueClaws and split his season between starting and relieving, finishing the season 8–4 with 8 saves, a 2.93 ERA, 111 strikeouts in 107.3 innings, and 27 walks.

He was named a South Atlantic League midseason All-Star, won the MiLB Best Reliever (Class A–Full Season) award, and Baseball America named him the # 23 prospect in the Phillies organization and said he had the best slider of any pitcher in their minor league system.

In the off-season he played for the Mesa Solar Sox of the Arizona Fall League where he was named an AFL Rising Star, blogging about his experience for MLB.com.

He played for Double-A Reading in 2011, starting the season in its starting rotation before moving to the bullpen.

Zeid was traded on July 29, 2011, along with Jonathan Singleton, Jarred Cosart, and Domingo Santana to the Houston Astros for All Star right fielder Hunter Pence.

After the season, Zeid pitched for the Salt River Rafters in the Arizona Fall League, where he was named an AFL Rising Star.

He debuted in the major leagues with the Houston Astros in 2013.

In January 2013 he married the former Stephanie Tiedemann, a doctor of neuropsychology at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, and a former Vanderbilt (2007) and Florida Institute of Technology (Masters/Doctor of Psychology) student.

They have two sons, Parker and Barrett.

In the 2016-17 off-season, he took a class at Tulane, as he had just a few credits left in order to obtain his degree.

He pitched for Team Israel at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and was named to the 2017 All-World Baseball Classic team.

His fastball reached 97 mph.

After retiring from major league baseball, Zeid joined the Chicago Cubs front office as a pitching analyst.

In November 2019, he obtained Israeli citizenship so that he could play for Team Israel in baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics.

He graduated in January 2019.

He pitched for Team Israel at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in the summer of 2021.

Zeid was born to Ira (a dentist) and Karen Zeid (who works at a senior center) in New Haven, Connecticut, grew up in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and is Jewish.

As a child he had a bar mitzvah, went to Hebrew school three days a week, and attended Congregation B'nai Jacob.

He always wears a Star of David around his neck and a chai, and as to being Jewish, he said: “If you become a successful athlete, you should let people know where you’re from.”