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I'll do my best to be an Aristotelian for the time being:
Different people succeed in cultivating virtue to different degrees. Thus, some people are very virtuous in all the meaningful ways and some are not. The existence of people who fail to attain significant levels of virtue is neither proof nor disproof that the cultivation of virtues is a worthwhile pursuit.
Onto the main question: is there an a priori justification for pursuing excellence? The answer is: Yes.
Excellence is another way of saying human fulfillment. What Aristotle means by pursuing excellence, then, is attempting to accomplish one's telos. The a priori justification for pursuing excellence is that it is the way to complete the goal of human existence, which is to seek perfection among all the virtues. I think of the old Army slogan, "Be all that you can be."
In relation to mediocrity, or more precisely with being satistied with mediocrity, I'd wager that those people are perpetually stuck on the slothful side of the virtue of industriousness. All virtues are about locating the means between two extremes and people who are satisfied with mediocrity are not in the right location along the axis of that particular virtue, whatever name you'd like to give it.
The benefit to working very hard and excelling is that, combined with the proper cunning and ambition, it will allow you to accomplish far more than someone that is satisfied with mediocrity: working hard makes it easier for you to accomplish your goals later in life.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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