Owning the last draft pick in the first round, the Red Sox know they’re not going to get the creme de la creme of the amateur player crop in baseball’s annual draft that begins on Thursday.
In fact, they barely scout those players.
“It’s our job to scout the country as well as we can,” said Sox scouting director Jason McLeod today. “But it usually doesn’t do us any good to look at the guys who are going to be in the first five or 10 picks. But once we’re out of the top 10 or 15, we get as many looks at guys as we can.”
As usual, the Red Sox will not draft to fill weak areas in the organization.
“The best strategy is to take the best player available on the board,” said GM Theo Epstein.
The Red Sox have drafted extremely well in recent years, and Epstein sees that trend continuing, regardless of how low they are in the draft order.
“Four or five years ago, when we were all new at this, we were all trying to get on the same page,” he said. “Now we have a lot of guys who have been together for a few years, so there is a consistency that makes the process go a lot more smoothly for us.”