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2025 Prep Baseball Wisconsin Player of the Year: 1B Dominic Santarelli

June 27, 2025
By Andy Sroka
National Managing Editor, Scouting

For the first time since 2019, the Prep Baseball Wisconsin Player of the Year is being awarded to a junior: 1B Dominic Santarelli (St. Joseph Catholic, 2026; Louisville commit). Santarelli slugged his way to this year’s award as he guided St. Joe’s to its fifth state championship, just a year after falling a win short in the WIAA Division 3 title game last spring.

After a stellar sophomore campaign, Santarelli somehow one-upped himself as a junior, despite the fact that no hitter in the state was pitched around or intentionally walked more than the top-ranked junior in Wisconsin. Santarelli walked 44 times in 127 plate appearances, putting pressure on the 77 at-bats he did get – and he really did take full advantage of the rare occasions that his opposition did opt to face the danger of throwing him a strike.

Ultimately, Santarelli finished with 33 hits in those 77 at-bats, and more than half (24) of them went for extra bases, including a St. Joe’s program record of 11 home runs, which also comfortably led the entire state this spring. He’s well-earned a reputation as one of the best bats in the Midwest, and it led to a most productive spring for his small D3 high school in Kenosha, and the Lancers did well to test themselves against D2 and D1 competition in non-conference play as well, which adds some extra context to the numbers Santarelli put up offensively.

His extra-base hit total also helped him generate a ton of runs, naturally, for St. Joe’s. He drove in 40 runs himself and he scored 57 times as well, as he generally hit from the lead-off spot with some talented teammates hitting behind him, in Peter Visconti (2025; UW-Milwaukee) and Zach Rizzo (2026), among others.

It’s worth noting here that the Louisville recruit isn’t just a prototypical middle-of-the-order bopper, either. Santarelli greatly improved his agility over the course of the last year, cutting his 60-yard dash time from a 7.32 to the 6.74 he ran in front of us at the start of March. It’s great speed for a high school-aged player anywhere, and he used it often during the high school season, stealing a whopping 43 bases, which made teams second guess how effective it was to intentionally walk him in the first place.

So, three tools in – hit, power, run – it’s not hard to see how Santarelli is seated at the top of the rankings inside a terrific Wisconsin 2026 class, but he found ways to make himself that much more essential to St. Joe’s state championship run by becoming an asset at first base defensively, while also operating as the team’s high-leverage reliever. He was the first option out of the ‘pen in tight situations, which helped him collect four saves (in four chances), the last of which came in the D3 title game itself, protecting a 3-2 lead against Kewaunee. In all, Santarelli pitched 24 innings and allowed just four runs on 11 hits, five walks, and he struck out 20 batters.

Santarelli’s contributions to SJCA this spring came from the five traditional tools we have in the game, but there’s no doubt he leads as this team’s captain, which makes his robust case for the state’s 2025 Player of the Year award undeniable.

He joins some elite company as the first non-senior to win the award since Max Wagner (Green Bay Preble, 2020) did so in 2019, and it’ll be especially exciting to see how Santarelli can level up again as a senior in the spring of 2026.

Wagner was robbed of the chance to become the first back-to-back Prep Baseball POTY in Wisconsin after the 2020 season was cancelled, so we’ll see if Santarelli can extend his legacy even further a year from now.

I wouldn’t bet against it.

PREP BASEBALL WISCONSIN PLAYER OF THE YEAR, PAST WINNERS:

+ 2024: Logan Dunn, OF/LHP, Wautoma
+ 2023: Alex Alicea, SS, St. Thomas More
+ 2022: Mitch Voit, RHP/3B, Whitefish Bay
+ 2021: Owen Washburn, RHP/SS, Webster
+ 2019: Max Wagner, 3B/RHP, Green Bay Preble
+ 2018: Jack Washburn, RHP/OF, Webster
+ 2017: Ryan Hoerter, RHP, Kenosha Indian Trail
+ 2016: Gavin Lux, SS, Kenosha Indian Trail
+ 2015: Logan Wonn, RHP/1B, Oconomowoc
+ 2014: Jeren Kendall, OF, Holmen

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