Kansas City Growing An All-Time Draft Class

KANSAS CITY—By any measure, the level of prep baseball talent in the Kansas City area–and even reaching into Kansas itself–is absurd for a Midwestern region.

The two best players in Kansas City are both potential top 20 picks in this year’s draft–a rare feat for anywhere other than Texas, California or Florida. Riley Pint, a flame-throwing righthander out of Kansas City’s St. Thomas Aquinas High, is likely to be taken in the top 10. Joey Wentz, a lefthander out of Shawnee Mission East High, could also go in the first round.

But the 2016 class doesn’t rely on two singular talents to buoy the city’s baseball reputation. Four from the Kansas City metro area should be drafted: Pint, Wentz, Tyler Benninghoff (Rockhurst High) and Nolan Williams, who is home-schooled but plays for Turner High in Kansas City.

Throw in Topeka product Ryan Zeferjahn and prep southpaws Lucas Krull and Tyler Grauer, and Kansas and the metro area are home to seven potential draft picks from the senior class alone.

For the region, it’s a once-in-a-generation group of players. But those in the Kansas City baseball community say it’s no fluke. It’s the result of a lot of preparation.

The region hasn’t always been known for its baseball talent. Places such as Florida, Texas, Georgia and California have always produced major league products at a high rate because warm-weather players get so much more game experience. Sunshine allows them to play virtually year-round. But in Kansas, that’s far from the case.

“Going to out-of-town tournaments and being from Kansas, everyone was like, ‘Oh, these dudes are probably not very good,’ ” Pint said of himself and Wentz. “Everyone kind of jokes with us because we’re from Kansas. They’re like, ‘How are the cornfields holding up this year?’ ”

But people are quickly realizing Kansas, and particularly Kansas City, are producing a lot more than corn these days.

Put simply, the 2016 class is unique and could have reached similar levels of success in other locations. But Kansas City has also gotten serious about training its amateur players. Premier Baseball Kansas City is one such place, providing specialized baseball training, arm-care programs for pitchers, and strength and conditioning that’s unique to the explosive movements required of a baseball player.

“I think that was the biggest thing that was lacking in Kansas City—having a place where you could go to get everything you needed as a baseball player,” said Bob Zimmerman, the pitching coach at Premier who has worked with both Pint and Wentz since last summer. “Before, it was like, ‘I’ve got to go get my throwing done here, then go down the street for my workouts, then down the street again for recovery.’”

Premier opened its doors in November, and is quickly becoming the place where the city’s elite talent trains. Pint and Wentz both go there, but so do Williams, Cole Duensing (Kansas State commit) and Krull (Arkansas commit). Thirteen seniors who trained with Premier are committed to a Division I school.

The Kansas City Barnstormers is another program that local players have benefited from. The organization has been around since 1996, but recently started to include a multidisciplinary approach to baseball training, similar to Premier’s. It’s been a few years since that training went to the next level at the Barnstormers, and the timeline coincides with when the 2016 class started to get serious about the sport.

“Pitching and hitting lessons have been around for a while, but there’s more specialized muscle training these days, and arm-care programs for pitchers,” said Joe Randa, who played in the majors for 12 years after being drafted by the Royals, and who has two sons on Wentz’s Shawnee Mission East team. “That approach is all across the United States, but it’s really become pretty important and popular over the last four or five years in Kansas City. Kids are starting to notice because they’re getting results.”

At programs like the Barnstormers or Premier, the results from physical training are obvious. Quick-twitch muscles are refined, hitting mechanics are perfected and pitchers’ arms are pampered as much as possible.

But it’s also the mental training that serves a purpose. It’s what’s made the 2016 class into an historical one.

“When you surround yourself with that kind of talent, and you’re pushing each other and you all have the same mindset, that does really well for a kid,” Randa said. “They become a product of their environment.”

The mystery of how Kansas City’s 2016 senior class got to be so good is a chicken-or-the-egg question: Is it coincidence that all these guys were born with talent, and then each took their own path to an MLB draft board or Division-I scholarship? Or have they all brought out the innate talent in one another?

Some of that talent was obvious years ago: Many of these players were on the same Little League teams growing up. According to Randa, it was clear early on that Kansas City was about to see a unique group emerge. Little Nolan “Nonie” Williams was the fastest youth baseball player most had ever seen. Pint was a dominant pitcher, even at 10 years old. Wentz played with the same fire at 12 as he does now.

As they grew up, that group rose to the top. But they were also joined by an abnormally large number of Division I prospects for the area.

Pint played with two other D-I players on his state-championship winning Aquinas team—James Cosentino (Kansas) and Blake Lillis (Arkansas). Wentz played alongside Zebulon Vermillion (Arkansas commit), Luke Anderson (Missouri) and Jake Randa (Western Kentucky).

There are three going to Oklahoma from nearby Kansas high schools—Braden Minor (Eisenhower), Nathan Wiles (Blue Valley West) and Trevor Munsch (Lawrence Free State).

The nation started to take notice. When Premier hosted its first annual showcase in February, more than 70 scouts showed up to watch 13 local high school pitchers, including Pint and Wentz.

For those around Kansas City baseball, the change in perception is obvious.

“I think it was kind of … not ‘there’s bad baseball here,’ but no one thought it was a dense talent pool,” Zimmerman said. “But it really is a dense talent pool, especially this 2016 class. It’s an electric group. You could put a D-I team together just from the senior class and go compete right now.”

The class will go down as one of the most—if not the most—successful in Kansas City history, at least as far as prep careers go.

But it appears that the class is not a once-in-a-lifetime shooting star, either.

Plenty of younger regional players are looking to keep Kansas City on the map as a baseball talent hotspot. Several class of 2018 players have already committed to big-time programs, including Park Hill’s Liam Henry (Arkansas), Bishop Miege’s Carter Putz (Notre Dame) and Thomas Aquinas’ Camron Macmillan (Vanderbilt)—all who could see their names pop up on future draft boards.

More than just cornfields, indeed.

“Is this class something that’s going to happen every year? No,” Randa said. “But is this new brand of baseball and talent level in Kansas City going to stick around? Absolutely.”

Ashley Scoby is a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star.