Holiday in June: A Day in the Life of the Red Sox Draft

There are plenty of terms used to describe the baseball operations offices of the Boston Red Sox. Few are flattering.

“The dungeon” and “the torture room” are a couple of phrases thrown around to depict the offices beneath Fenway where most of the team’s baseball decisions take place. Such phrases are understandable, particularly around the time of the Major League Baseball draft.

For days and even weeks beforehand, several team officials will camp out in this subterranean realm. During that time, the opportunity to see either natural light or family members will prove exceedingly rare.

And yet the time -- during which several members of the baseball ops staff will consume three catered meals together every day -- is not without its appeal.

“I feel like the draft is like the holidays,” said Sox amateur scouting director Jason McLeod. “Every year, all you do is sit around and eat, talk about the game you love and the players. It’s like being with family, and eating every day, all day during the holidays.”

If the preparation process is like the holidays, then there is little question that the first day of the draft is like Christmas Day. Finally, after scouting players for a year and sometimes much more, a team gets to find out what awaits under the tree, and which players are going to be available when their pick finally comes around.

Entering the 2009 draft, the Sox are prepared. The reports on more than 2,000 players from 18 full-time area scouts and six more part-timers, along with four regional cross-checkers, a national cross-checker and several front-office employees have been digested.

In the weeks building to the draft, the Sox have been bringing potential picks to Fenway for workouts. Their last prospect -- catcher Max Stassi, who most publications predict will end up being taken by Boston -- works out in front of team officials on Monday afternoon. In many respects, the most important work has now concluded.

“The draft just kind of happens. It’s all about the preparation,” said Sox general manager Theo Epstein. “Draft day should be simple execution. You make or break your drafts with the scouting process and the preparation of the draft.”

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On the eve of the draft, most of the group that will occupy a conference room during the draft -- McLeod and Assistant Director of Amateur Scouting Amiel Sawdaye, GM Theo Epstein, Assistant GMs Ben Cherington and Jed Hoyer, Assistant to the GM Allard Baird, the cross-checkers and a couple of area scouts -- will break up around 6 p.m. McLeod, Cherington and Epstein will stay behind for some final moments of quiet contemplation, interspersed with discussions about scenarios for how the draft might unfold.

This day of this year’s draft offers a new wrinkle. For the first time, it will be televised by the MLB Network.

The development is viewed as a great one in baseball circles, giving prominence to the amateur scouts who serve as the rarely seen backbone of the game. Even so, the primetime event will force a shift from a traditional 1 p.m. start. McLeod and the rest of the group that will oversee the draft still arrive in the morning on the day of the draft.

“We’re used to rolling in, if the draft starts at 1, coming in at 8 or 8:30, jacked up and ready to go,” said McLeod. “(The change) made Tuesday a very long day, sitting around, talking what we thought was going to happen, and making some adjustments a little deeper down in the draft.”

The cross-checkers spend the day on the phone with area scouts to try to get the most updated information available about player signability -- an issue that can create some last-minute shifts in who might be available at a pick. But, for the most part, the pace is calm.

McLeod and Epstein, who have been close friends since their days with the Padres in the Padres front office in the 1990s, will repeat an annual ritual that began in 2005. Several hours before the Sox and Yankees will play, Epstein and McLeod go for an early-afternoon stroll across the outfield.

“The Walk Talk,” as McLeod describes it, is the last time both men will enjoy light of day until after midnight. It commenced in the moments leading up to McLeod’s first year