Draft Preview - Boston Red Sox

Now that Friday's draft preview is up, here's today's draft preview.

The twentieth team draft preview on my blog focuses on the Boston Red Sox and their scouting director Amiel Sawdaye.

Here's an excerpt from the writeup, which features small writeups on 15 players involved with Sawdaye's work as the Assistant Director of Scouting, as this will be his first draft as scouting director:

The Red Sox have undergone the biggest change in their amateur scouting department this offseason since Jason McLeod took over as scouting director starting with the 2005 draft, having taken over from David Chadd, now scouting director for the Detroit Tigers. Starting at the bottom, the Red Sox shifted a few area scouts in some critical areas, including Southern California, where they promoted Dan Madsen to West Coast Crosschecker. Despite that void, they filled it with one of the most popular Southern California area scouts in the business, Tom Battista, the former Braves scout and crosschecker who is famous for signing such notable names as Tommy Hanson, Kris Medlen, Freddie Freeman and Braeden Schlehuber. Moving around and switching out area scouts is nothing new for teams, but the upper level changes have been more drastic for Boston this offseason. As noted, they’ve changed West Coast crosscheckers, and they’ve also changed National Crosscheckers, promoting David Finley to Special Assistant to the General Manager and filling that spot with former regional crosschecker Mike Rikard. Lastly, but most important, Amiel Sawdaye was promoted from his long-time Assistant Director of Scouting position to the Scouting Director post. Though there have been multiple changes, I expect more of the same from the Red Sox in 2010 when comparing their upcoming draft to their previous few. Sawdaye was AD of Scouting for McLeod for each of their five year stints, and Sawdaye essentially learned the ropes from the more experienced McLeod. Therefore, we have to look at some trends of McLeod’s. The first one is a penchant for helium arms and bats. Quite a few players that McLeod took early were players that moved up boards very fast in the year-plus before their draft. That makes predicting more interesting, but also more fun. There’s a clear preference for prep bats over collegiate bats, but the majority of pitchers were collegiate arms, though that’s less set than the hitter side. In general, power or speed must be present to be a Boston hitter draftee. These are high-level trends, but they’re worth noting.

Direct link here.

I'm also running a special on the 2010 MLB Draft Notebook, as the next 6 buyers will be entered in a drawing for an autographed baseball from Jameson Taillon. If you'd like to read more about the promotion, go ahead and do so here.

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What do you think? What will the Red Sox do?