At 13 years old, it was already evident Dalton Wentz had the potential to become an MLB Draft pick.

His swing was already lethal, and he could play essentially any infield position his coaches needed him to. Still, Wentz knew something was missing from his game. Something that could push him from a fringe draft pick to a definite mid-round selection. So, he asked his father.

Lenny Wentz, a former professional baseball player himself, knew exactly what his son needed to hear. Wentz’s size was making him slower, and his 60-yard dash time wasn’t close to draft ready. So, Lenny challenged Wentz to slice his time on the event down by half a second. Over the next two years, he stayed committed to that goal.

“I can still hear him running every night on the treadmill for 12 minutes at eight miles per hour,” Lenny said. “He can run a 6.8 or 6.7 (60-yard dash) now.”

That push was just one of the ways Wentz’s game was shaped by his father’s professional experience. Lenny, who spent time as an infielder in both the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres organizations in the early 1990’s, has been the catalyst of Wentz’s development. Throughout his childhood, Wentz’s game was constantly molded by his father’s infield mechanics and mentality. Now, over 30 years after his father signed with the Reds, Wentz is on the doorstep of authoring his own chapter in professional baseball as an MLB draft pick.

For Wentz, playing baseball as a kid wasn’t as much a choice as it was a lifestyle. Although both his parents had past experience in baseball and softball, they didn’t push him into following in their footsteps. It turned out they didn’t need to. Starting at just two years old, Wentz tirelessly begged his parents to pitch him wiffle balls in the backyard, often hitting them hard enough to land on the roof.

After a couple more years of backyard ball, Lenny signed him up for a local tee ball team in their hometown of Madison Heights, Virginia. Wentz was the youngest kid on the team each season he played, but still fit right in with his teammates — a trend that followed him throughout much of his young baseball career.

At about nine, Lenny opened up a spot for Wentz on his travel team — the Rubber Arm Rockets — where he had been the head coach for years. That’s when Wentz’s true professional-caliber baseball training began.

When he was old enough to use it, Lenny installed a weight room in their basement that quickly became Wentz’s favorite room in the house. Every day after school or sometimes even when he was just bored between games, Wentz could be found jumping from one set of equipment to another, testing his limits one rep at a time.

Those hours in the gym coupled with his dad’s weekly team workouts quickly morphed Wentz from one of the smallest to the biggest on his team. Currently a towering 6’2”, 215 lb., he still brings that same size and strength advantage to both Wake Forest and Brewster.

It would’ve been easy for Lenny to mold Wentz into a replica of his prime, but he wanted something greater for his son. Instead, he looked back on his own playing days and tried to model Wentz’s game after the best player he said he faced — Atlanta Braves legend Chipper Jones.

When he battled against Jones in the minor leagues, Lenny said he was always impressed by his lights out infield ability. Jones’ presence in the batter's box as one of the league’s only switch hitters also gave him a distinct advantage by allowing him to consistently face pitchers from the side that favored his hitting. The adjustment led him to two Silver Slugger awards throughout his 19-year career.

Inspired by that example, Dalton began experimenting with switch-hitting during his time with the Rockets. One week he would swing on one side, then switch the next. Even if it meant giving an opposing arm an easy strikeout, Wentz knew that gaining experience swinging on his nondominant side would pay off in the long run. He needed to get his 10,000 hours in, Lenny said. By the time his sophomore year of high school rolled around, Wentz was a full-time switch hitter.

“I tried to give (switch hitting) up, but my dad told me that if I wanted to play professional baseball one day I was going to be a switch hitter, so I just always stuck with it,” Wentz said.

In terms of his positional play, Wentz absorbed all of what his dad had learned from his time under Cincinnati and San Diego’s positional coaches. Wentz never limited himself to playing just one infield position in particular during games, so he often practiced playing shortstop, second base and third base — just like his dad had done.

Wentz’s development wasn’t limited to only the physical aspects of his game. Lenny and Dale Shrock, one of the Rockets’ assistant coaches, also helped fortify the mental side of the team’s game through weekly group lessons. During each season, the team would come together and take chapter-by-chapter notes from a book called “Heads Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time.”

Although Shrock said Wentz was the last person on the team who needed to change his mindset, his book would still always be the most torn and ragged out of anyone at the end of each season.

“(The lessons) were a lot about being able to rekindle yourself when you’re starting to get sped up in a game. It was about dealing with failure and success and all those things in the baseball world,” Wentz said. “That book is what I credit a lot of my mental tricks to.”

By the time he joined the high school baseball landscape as a ninth grader, Wentz’s diverse skill set and past exposure on the national stage had already gathered the interest of ACC and SEC schools alike. At times, there would be up to five college or professional scouts watching Wentz during games or practices, but the pressure to perform never bothered him.

Instead, he used the bright lights as extra motivation to lead by example on both his high school team and the Rockets. Before practices, he would often show up early to the high school field to set up equipment and warm up. Following games, he was usually the only player who stayed behind to squeeze in extra batting practice before heading home. Lenny described the source of his work ethic as, “Never being as good as you want to be, and never being as bad as you think you are.”

“We would have a weekend where he maybe didn’t have as many hits as he wanted,” Shrock said. “He'd come back the next week and say his shoulders hurt, and his hands didn’t have any skin on them.”

By the time his high school career came to a close, the statistics spoke for themselves. Entering his time at Wake Forest, Wentz was tabbed the No. 1 shortstop in Virginia and the No. 98 overall prospect in the class of 2024 by Perfect Game. He also maintained a strong batting average throughout his four seasons with Amherst County, the exclamation point being his senior year where he finished with a scintillating .711.

When reflecting on Wentz’s impact on the program, Amherst County High School head coach John Apperson said he was one of the two best players he had ever coached. Apperson also added he wouldn’t be surprised to see Wentz drafted as far up as the first round someday when the time comes.

“Every big moment I can remember where maybe we were in a really tight spot and had to come back or there was a turning point where we kind of won handily, all the moments that fueled those events, he was a part of,” Apperson said.

Since Wentz eased into his freshman season with the Demon Deacons this past spring, pointers from his dad have become less common. Sure, he’ll still send him a little reminder via text every once in a while, but he knows that at this point in Wentz’s career nobody understands what he needs better than himself.

And so far, Lenny’s now hands-off approach has worked perfectly. Starting all but three of Wake Forest’s games as a freshman, Wentz piled up 13 home runs and 50 RBIs with a .316 average to boot. The strong first impression likely cemented him in the Demon Deacons’ batting order going forward.

“I think he’s a better baseball player than I was. He’s got more physical ability as far as strength and size, and being able to switch hit. I can still outrun him, though!” Lenny said with a laugh.

After declining offers amid the draft last year, Wentz will have a tough choice to make in July 2026. Sign with an interested major league suitor, or continue to develop at the Division I level?

It’s an important decision, but one that Wentz probably isn’t stressing too much over as he battles with the Whitecaps this summer. Whether it's on or off the field, he’s used to making difficult decisions under pressure. He doesn’t mind putting in the hard work when nobody’s watching, a trait that’s been instilled in him almost all his life.

Ask him where he gets it from, and he’ll always say the same thing.

“He’s really who I give credit to for everything,” Wentz said of his dad. “(Now, I’m) able to go out and do this at a high level and just have a love for the game like he did.”

Title photo credit: Kayla McCullough.