Great high school baseball teams occasionally produce a star. Rarely do they produce a
cluster
of them at the same position.
We are breaking down the greatest
positional groups in prep history — the pitching staffs,
infields and outfields where multiple future stars shared the field at
the same time.
Some dominated at the prep level. Others hinted at
greatness that would fully emerge years later in the major leagues. Read on for a deep look at three California schools that defied long odds to produce multiple stars at the same position.
After a breakout season at Harvard-Westlake in 2012, Max Fried has gone on to win 92 games in the Major Leagues. (PHOTO: Alyson Boyer Rode)
With three future Major League opening-day starters — Lucas Giolito, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty — the Wolverines finished 24-5 and reached the championship game of the National High School Invitational. Despite the strong season, the year still carries a lingering sense of what might have been.
Harvard-Westlake entered the season loaded. Giolito, a 6-foot-6 right-hander widely projected as a potential No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 MLB Draft, was the staff ace after going 9-1 with 78 strikeouts in 70 innings as a junior. Fried, a senior left-hander, had transferred from Montclair Prep after the school cut its baseball program. Flaherty, meanwhile, was an emerging sophomore.
Giolito opened the season in dominant fashion, winning his first two starts and touching 100 miles per hour on the radar gun. But everything changed March 7. In the seventh inning of a game against Bishop Alemany, Giolito sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, ending his season.
The injury forced Fried and Flaherty into larger roles.
Fried responded with a breakout senior season, going 8-2 with 105 strikeouts and earning MaxPreps All-American honors. Flaherty showed flashes of the future, finishing 6-1 with 52 strikeouts before later becoming a two-time MaxPreps National Player of the Year as a junior and senior.
All three pitchers were high draft picks. Fried went No. 7 overall in 2012 to the Padres, while Giolito — despite the injury — was selected No. 16 by the Nationals. Flaherty followed two years later as the 34th overall pick in 2014.
Each went on to build a successful Major League career.
Fried has been the most decorated of the trio, compiling a 92-41 record with 1,052 strikeouts and finishing in the top five of Cy Young voting three times. He led the majors in wins with a 19-5 season for the Yankees last year.
Giolito has gone 71-66 with 1,198 strikeouts, overcoming the elbow injury that cut short his senior season to lead the league in starts, complete games and shutouts at various points in his career.
Flaherty has added a 63-56 mark with 1,130 strikeouts and a fourth-place Cy Young finish in 2019.
Remarkably, the Harvard-Westlake trio remains the only group of high school teammates in Major League history in which all three pitchers have recorded more than 1,000 career strikeouts.
Infield: Locke (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1973
Locke's 1973 infield featured two future Hall of Famers — yet the Saints didn't win the Los Angeles City Section championship.
The Saints captured the Marine League title but were eliminated in the second round of the section playoffs. Still, the infield talent on that roster remains unmatched at the high school level.
At the center of the group were first baseman Eddie Murray and shortstop Ozzie Smith, both eventual Hall of Famers. Murray’s younger brother, Rich Murray, handled catching duties as a sophomore while Mel Quarles played third base and Derrick Jackson manned second.
Eddie Murray was the Marine League MVP and earned second-team All-City Section honors. Smith was a two-time all-league selection while both Rich Murray and Quarles earned first-team all-league recognition.
Interestingly, the group’s greatness was not fully apparent at the time. Smith — widely regarded today as the greatest defensive shortstop in Major League history — was not drafted out of high school. He later emerged at Cal Poly before being selected in the fourth round of the 1977 draft.
Eddie Murray was the most advanced prospect in the group. The Orioles selected him in the third round of the 1973 draft and he quickly rose to stardom in the majors.
Rich Murray was drafted by the Giants in the sixth round in 1975 while Quarles and Jackson did not play professionally.
Despite the Saints’ early playoff exit, no other high school infield can claim a pair of future Hall of Famers playing side by side — a distinction that keeps Locke’s 1973 squad firmly in the conversation as the greatest high school infield ever assembled.
Outfield: McClymonds (Oakland, Calif.), 1953
If the popular story is true, McClymonds once fielded the greatest outfield in high school baseball history.
The trio supposedly consisted of Frank Robinson, Curt Flood and Vada Pinson — players who would go on to combine for 21 Major League All-Star appearances.
But did it actually happen?
All three players attended McClymonds during the early 1950s and the legend of them sharing the same outfield has circulated for decades. Numerous articles, podcasts and online sources repeat the claim that Robinson, Flood and Pinson played together for the Warriors.
A closer look at the timeline raises questions.
Flood attended McClymonds as a sophomore in 1953 before transferring to Oakland Tech, where he finished his high school career and graduated in January 1956. Robinson, meanwhile, was a senior in 1953 and starred for the Oakland Athletic League champions — but he played third base, earning first-team all-league honors ahead of Oakland Tech’s John Brodie.
Pinson adds another wrinkle. In 1953 he was still a freshman at Westlake Junior High. He later attended McClymonds for three seasons, graduating in 1956, but he was not yet at the school during Robinson’s senior year.
It's possible the three may have shared the outfield in American Legion baseball, though contemporary newspaper accounts offer no confirmation.
What is certain is that McClymonds was a Bay Area powerhouse during the era. The Warriors won three straight league titles from 1951 to 1953 and put together a 27-game winning streak while Oakland produced an extraordinary wave of future professional athletes across multiple sports.
Even if the famous trio never actually lined up together in the same high school outfield, the possibility alone speaks to the remarkable concentration of talent at McClymonds during the early 1950s.
And if Robinson and Flood did patrol the outfield together even briefly, that would be enough to give the 1953 Warriors a legitimate claim to the greatest high school outfield of all time.
