With the promotion of Javier Baez, prospect fever is in full swing in Wrigleyville, and Cubs fans are looking to the future of the team even more than they usually do. With the plan that the team will finally be good next year in 2016, there’s a dream lineup that most fans are ticking off the calendar in hopes of seeing.

Assuming Chicago’s unmatched hitting prospects all pan out, the assumption is that the lineup will be as follows.

C Wellington Castillo

1B Anthony Rizzo

2B Javier Baez

SS Addison Russell

3B Starlin Castro

LF Jorge Soler

CF Arismendy Alcántara

RF Kris Bryant

The excitement is definitely warranted around that lineup. It includes three guys ranked in MLB.com’s top 10 prospects (Baez, Russell, Bryant), the 36th and 53rd ranked prospect (Alcantara and Soler), and two all-stars (Rizzo, Castro). If all those prospects pan out, they’re going to have an absolutely deadly lineup. Then again, if you’re talking about prospects, it’s the biggest if in the world.

We won’t know just how good Russell and Bryant can really be until they’re up in the bigs, but when looking at the team’s future, one player is quietly making a case to be a part of it: Chris Coghlan.

The 29-year-old is in his fifth MLB season. After a successful collegiate career at Ole Miss, he was drafted by the Marlins 36th overall in 2006. His career was kicked off by being named National League Rookie of the Year in 2009. Since then, he hasn’t seen quite as much success as his rookie campaign, or at least that was the case until he joined the Cubs in 2014.

Signed to a minor league contract with the team, he got an invite to spring training and played well enough to earn a spot on the big league club. Since then he’s played well enough to prove that maybe 2009 wasn’t a fluke. As of August 9, Couglan is hitting .296 with six homers and 21 RBIs. Perhaps most impressive is his .376 OBP.

Where things get really good for #8 is when you look at his numbers in July. I don’t need to tell you how impressive a line of .376/.449/.600 is. He topped the league for average in the month among all players with at least 50 plate appearances. He was .02 ahead of South Side phenom Jose Abreu. Granted, it isn’t likely that Coghlan continues hitting at a clip above .350, but with the way he’s played, there’s no reason to think that he’ll be falling back to the low .200’s any time soon.

If the Cubs do want to retain his services beyond this season, they’re likely going to have to pay him more than the $800,000 that he’s getting this year.1 But I’d say that he’s worth a fair notch more than that anyway. While the prospects in the Cubs system are exciting, it’s likely that at least one won’t pan out. Even if they all do, it’s hard to think of a 2015 starting lineup where the veteran leadership is coming from Anthony Rizzo. Coghlan could provide that leadership and some great production out of the top of the lineup. After all, numbers never lie.