Chicago Cubs: How good were the position players in high school?

Some Chicago Cubs players were destined for greatness from a very early age. Other’s followed more of the underdog career arc on their journey to the Show.

Before they wore Cubs blue, several common denominators probably connected every current Chicago Cubs position player.

They woke up early to go to high school, sat through six or seven hours of learning and then laced up the spikes and put on the glove to play baseball on a team where they were likely the star.

Certainly, not every baseball player who was a stud in high school is destined for MLB greatness. Most don’t ever make it that far and if they do it’s much more likely that they become a blip on the radar of a 100+ year old game than a guy who rewrites the game’s history in any significant way.

With about four notable exceptions, the current Chicago Cubs position player squadron consists of guys who weren’t highly heralded in the recruiting department in high school.

Here’s some things to note before carrying on with the content.

• College baseball isn’t nearly as scrutinized or marketed as college basketball or football. So high school baseball prospect rankings aren’t nearly as mainstream as the other two sports. PerfectGame.org has the best database for rankings. BaseballFactory.com also has pretty good information although their database only goes back to 2010 (they randomly don’t have 2012 in their database either).
• Jason Kipnis and Willson Contreras weren’t in either database.
• High school baseball information is much less available than the same information pertaining to basketball and baseball.