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First baseman Trent Lenihan, a native of White Rock, BC, has landed in the Forest City this summer. He’s hoping to put up big numbers in the CBL and propel himself to the next level.
It didn’t take long for Trent Lenihan to show off the pop in his bat. In just the second game of the season, a road contest in Brantford, Lenihan drove an 0-1 pitch over the centre field fence to open the scoring – and give the 23-year-old his first career home run in the Canadian Baseball League.
And he’s been a productive middle-of-the-order bat since. In his first eight games with the Majors, Lenihan has batted an even .300 (9-for-30) with a .417 on-base percentage, a pair of long balls, five walks and a team-high nine runs scored.
“He’s got a big bat, I knew that coming in,” Majors manager Roop Chanderdat said earlier this spring. “But then you see it firsthand. And on top of that, he’s a super kid. He’s just a good guy.”
The Majors are hoping their first baseman can be this year’s Canadian success story in London: a domestic player with a strong collegiate track record who plays like an all-star – and then moves on to the next level. Lenihan is hoping so, too.
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It’s been an interesting journey to get here. Growing up in White Rock, British Columbia, a border town with the United States situated on the south side of the Lower Mainland, Lenihan also played rugby, hockey, and a little golf.
And he was pretty good at them all. In fact, he was playing AAA hockey right up until he made a decision, in Grade 10, to choose baseball over everything else. Family played a factor, as the sport ran in the Lenihan clan.
“I was definitely influenced by my oldest brother, Quinn,” the Majors’ first baseman said. “Whatever he was playing, I wanted to play. And my grandpa. He was signed by the [New York] Yankees out of high school a long time ago, and he’s always loved baseball, so that [contributed] to me loving it quite a bit.”
Lenihan’s grandfather, Andrew Johnston, served as president of the White Rocks Baseball Association for a time while his grandson was growing up. During that time, the younger Lenihan got a taste of competition at his age group’s highest level, as his White Rock South Shore little league team won the Canadian title (beating East Nepean 16–0 in a mercy-rule final) and advanced to the Little League World Series.
Canadian teams, historically, haven’t fared well at the big tournament, and that year was no different, but Lenihan did come away with a nice memory of what was the team’s highlight of the event, a 16-strikeout performance from teammate Matt Wilkinson against Mexico in a tough 1-0 loss. Wilkinson was drafted in the 10th round of the 2023 MLB draft by the Cleveland Guardians and is now in the San Francisco Giants’ system, playing in Double-A.
As he grew up, Lenihan moved on to play for the White Rock Tritons in the British Columbia Premier Baseball League (BCPBL), a high-level minor league with 13 teams across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.
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Finishing up high school at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic affected Lenihan’s recruitment to play college baseball. In fact, he says, nobody really reached out to him despite a talented minor ball career.
“I had gotten into UBC academically, into the business school, which is a good degree, and baseball didn’t seem to be doing too great, so I accepted that,” Lenihan said.
Over the next year, UBC had their courses entirely online, which allowed Lenihan to keep playing for the Tritons as he stayed in White Rock, continuing to hone his skills on the diamond.
Following that season, he was still hoping that some American schools would reach out. But the phone never rang. That didn’t stop his persistence to play at the next level, though, and he made the UBC team – as a walk-on – in his second year.
“I started on the [junior varsity] team. I probably played five games and hit four home runs, so I did pretty well and then by that October I was on the varsity team,” he said.
Being a walk-on isn’t a typical route at UBC, as most players are recruited to the team, which competes in the NAIA and has long boasted a strong program. During his Thunderbirds career, in fact, a few of Lenihan’s teammates were selected in the MLB draft.
No matter. He stepped right in and made his mark – which is probably an understatement.
While at UBC, Lenihan established himself as one of the best hitters in the program’s storied history, posting an overall batting line of .338/.407/.565 in 198 games. In his last two seasons, he totalled 173 hits in 111 games with 25 home runs. For you stats folks out there, that projects out to a 252-hit, 37-home run season in 162 games, the length of a major league campaign.
Lenihan also served as the team’s captain for his final two years.
Looking back, Lenihan says it’s more than just the baseball that has stuck with him.
“In the conference that we played in at UBC, our shortest bus ride was six and a half hours, so [there was] a lot of silliness and a lot of fun on those buses; there are a lot of good memories.”
His final season also stands out. That year, UBC won their regional conference for the first time in years.
Lenihan graduated from the UBC Sauder School of Business in May of 2025 with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance with a concentration in Business Analytics.
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During the summers between years at UBC, Lenihan kept himself busy with summer ball out west in two different leagues: the West Coast League and the Western Canadian Baseball League. His first full summer was spent in Okotoks, Alberta.
“That was my first real hint of pure baseball, where you’re playing most days and you don’t have homework to do,” the first baseman said. “And they were good crowds, a lot like London, where the city just loves it. It was cool for me to see that [baseball is] a bigger thing in some cities.”
Lenihan posted a .352/.432/.537 line for the Dawgs that summer, wrapping up the season with a championship. The next year at UBC, he eclipsed the 1.000 OPS mark for the first time.
The next two summers, Lenihan stepped up to the WCL and played for the Edmonton Riverhawks.
“Calibre-wise, it was better baseball, with some of those guys from bigger-name schools from the States coming up,” he said. “In Edmonton, it was cool playing in the old Triple-A stadium there.
“The owners, the Greggs, were great people. We had 7,000 people a night watching, so that’s pretty hard to beat. Summer ball is such a pure thing; all you’re doing is playing baseball.”
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Two years ago, Majors manager Roop Chanderdat first reached out to Lenihan, trying to recruit him to London for the 2025 season.
Around that time, a court case was playing out in the U.S. regarding the eligibility of junior college players to be granted admission to the NCAA level. The ruling leaned in favour of adding eligibility to these players, so Lenihan, qualifying under the new guidelines, gained another year of eligibility.
He went back to Edmonton, which kept his eligibility intact, hoping to transfer to an NCAA school for a final college season, but it didn’t pan out.
But he’s here now – and he’s already making his mark early in the inaugural CBL season.
Besides Chanderdat’s recruiting pitch, former Major Kaiden Cardoso vouched for the Majors, with only good things to say about his time in London to Lenihan. Cardoso capitalized on his strong play in the Forest City to sign with the Ottawa Titans of the Frontier League.
That’s a journey Lenihan would love to replicate.
“The goal for sure would be to move up and go play in the Frontier, the American, or the Pioneer leagues, with the goal of having a contract purchased by a [major league] affiliate,” he said. “But right now, I’m enjoying this time in London, and I’m going to work hard to make strides to progress.”
