By the time Tuesday’s Major League Baseball draft begins, the Nationals’ front office will have ranked 800 amateur players on their draft board. By Thursday night, they will have selected about 50 of those players.
But running a draft room is a complicated, unwieldy process. That task falls to Nats’ director of scouting Dana Brown, who must manage the thoughts and opinions of everyone from acting general manager Mike Rizzo to the scouts, whose direct input helped shape the draft board. Because Washington failed to sign 2008 first-round pick Aaron Crow, it actually has two picks in the top 10 — the first time since the draft started in 1965 that has happened.
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“Our big term is ‘honor the board.’ When things start going fast you have to employ certain strategies and be light on your feet,” Rizzo said. “But you always have to look at the board and say, ‘We have spent all year getting the board the way it is.’ It makes little sense to me to go off the board and take a flier on a guy.”
