It’s rare for the Chicagoland area to have a first rounder in the Major League Baseball Draft. It’s exceedingly rare to see it in back to back years. Ed Howard, out of Mount Carmel High School on the South Side of Chicago, became the third shortstop selected and 16th overall pick, by the Chicago Cubs tonight. If you’re wagering on this, like you would at Gclub, you just would not have seen this coming; at all. That’s the beauty of it.
Last year at this time, Quinn Priester, from suburban Cary-Grove, was taken with the 18th overall selection by the Pittsburgh Pirates. For more on Priester go here, as for Ed Howard, well, he has a great role model and friend in the White Sox SS Tim Anderson.
The reigning AL batting champion (a first for the White Sox since Frank Thomas in 1997) lives in the south suburbs (Howard is from Lynewood), and he’s gotten to know the 6-2, 185 high school senior better recently.
“I’ve got a lot closer to him the last few months,” Howard said to the Chicago Sun-Times. “We talked a lot, and we realized how much we have in common.
“I appreciate him staying in touch. He’s a big-league shortstop, and he doesn’t have to reach out to me.”
Howard just needs to add some power to a bat that’s already pretty dangerous. He has the potential to be a 20-20 hitter in the show, and tracks to the Majors in about three to four seasons. Last season, the player nicknamed “Silk,” due to how smooth he is to watch on the diamond, hit .418 with 42 runs, 13 doubles, four triples, three home runs and 33 RBIs.
The six-foot, two-inch, 185-pound Howard became the first Illinois high school position player to be selected in the first round of the MLB draft since Jayson Werth in 1997. He played in the 2019 Under Armour All-America Game at Wrigley Field, and last year was a member of the national team’s U18 club.
He was also the starting shortstop on the 2014 Jackie Robinson West Little League Team that advanced to the finals of the Little League World Series, and considered by many the best overall defensive player in this class. He’s currently signed to the University of Oklahoma, but it’s almost certain he’ll never play for the Sooners.
Howard is not the highest overall draft pick out of Mount Carmel high school however. Catcher Erik Pappas was the sixth pick overall by the California Angels in the 1984 draft. Here’s where we had him going in our last mock draft.
The Daily Southtown did a feature on him, which included the story of how he first learned to play baseball. When he was five, his mom would toss a beach ball at him, and he would swing at it with a whiffle bat.
“That’s how it all started,” Howard said to the suburban outlet. “It was fun. I would always make contact. She threw me a whiffle ball as I got better.”
Howard was recommended to the Cubs brass by area scout John Pedrotty.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
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