How do you find the next Jarren Duran?
As the Red Sox line up names on their board leading into the start of the MLB Draft on Sunday night, their task is defined not by the ability to see players for who they are, but instead who they might become.
When players are drafted out of high school or college, the moment represents the start of what usually proves a years-long process of development in pro ball. And so, the success of a draft is defined not simply by taking players with the most potential, but instead the most potential that a team can shape.
As he prepares for his first All-Star Game, Duran — taken in the seventh round out of Long Beach State in 2018 as a speedy, slap-and-dash second baseman who hit for almost no power in college — represents an example of a player who enters pro ball with notable strengths and, with tweaks and time, emerges as a multidimensional force.
More recently, the Sox’ selection of Kristian Campbell in the fourth round of the 2023 draft seems like a coup. Like Duran, Campbell was an athletic second baseman who showed incredible bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline but little power in college while focusing on a line-drive and ground-ball approach.
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This year, with additional strength that has translated to bat speed and an improved ability to drive the ball in the air rather than on the ground, Campbell is one of the fastest-rising prospects in baseball. He’s hit .352/.459/.600 with 12 homers in High-A Greenville and Double A Portland. He’s now one of the top 100 prospects in the sport.
How do you find more players who can make those leaps? For the Sox, the answer lies in marrying the efforts of their amateur scouting department that runs the draft and the player development department that will take a group of new minor leaguers and guide their progress over the coming years.
“I think it’s been our No. 1 priority over the last few years,” amateur scouting director Devin Pearson said of the collaboration between his department and player development.
The Sox’ draft room has become crowded in pursuit of that partnership.
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Several player development staffers — including department director Brian Abraham, assistant director Chris Stasio, director of hitting development and program design Jason Ochart, director of pitching Justin Willard, and field coordinator Andrew Wright — contribute to scouting and will be in the draft room. Yet the relationship of the two departments runs deeper than that.
The scouting department invites player development personnel, as well as members of the sport science staff, medical department, and pitching and hitting coordinators to apprise scouts on areas where the club can help players improve — and those where improvement is more difficult.
Scouts, meanwhile, check in on their players at different intervals such as fall instructional camps and spring training to reinforce their understanding of how the organization develops players and how well projected growth is translating on the field.
That cross-pollination represents an effort to identify and nurture the traits that can unlock upside in draftees once they enter the system.
“Hopefully we can select a high number of players that carry the innate attributes we want but also have runway or potential to develop the traits we think are developable,” said assistant GM Paul Toboni, who oversees amateur scouting and player development with a heavy emphasis on the integration of the two.
In which areas are the Sox confident they can help players and which are more challenging to improve?
“Without divulging too many of our secrets or philosophies, I think it’s just really broken down into, one is just how your brain works, and two is how your body works,” said Pearson. “It’s more difficult to adjust changes to your brain — your ability to recognize the pitch and get your barrel to the ball, as well as your ability to recognize the pitch and decide to swing or not. It’s easier to change your movement patterns and how you adjust your body.”
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Athleticism, hand-eye coordination, and ability to recognize pitch types and the strike zone are all harder to coach than, say, strength and conditioning, bat speed, or bat path. (That said, the Sox do place a heavy emphasis on coaching players’ swing decisions, efforts that have shown results this year with prospects such as Marcelo Mayer, Nick Yorke, and Matthew Lugo.)
Campbell appealed to the Sox as a player who swung at strikes, didn’t chase pitches out of the zone, and whose barrel seemed to find the ball with remarkable frequency — while simply hitting it at bad angles. Given the room in his body to add strength, the team felt confident it could help Campbell gain strength and bat speed and that its hitting coordinators could adjust how his bat moved through the point of contact to drive the ball in the air.
“Credit to the hitting group, but it was a mix of clearly understanding what areas he needed to improve in, knowing the kid would be bought in on that, and then just doing it,” said Pearson.
Pitching is different. Nearly anything can be coached — strength/velocity, pitch design, pitch usage. So, the emphasis is on finding distinguishing traits in terms of athleticism, arsenal, or delivery that represents a starting block.
“It’s how they move and how they get the ball to move. You’re just looking for guys that do unique things and that can come in a bunch of different ways and shapes,” said Pearson. “There could be a guy with huge velocity that we feel comfortable getting to better secondary shapes, and that’s a bet that we want to make. Or there’s a guy with really good secondary movement and it’s as simple as just throwing the secondary more. There’s a bunch of different development paths that we can attack.”
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Sometimes, that means getting the player development and medical departments to identify players who are coming off injuries. The Sox took righthander Hunter Dobbins in the eighth round of the 2021 draft and lefthander Hayden Mullins in the 12th round of the 2022 draft when both were coming off college Tommy John surgeries. Now healthy, both have developed their pitch mixes in pro ball and emerged as potential big league starters.
Over 20 rounds from Sunday through Tuesday, the Sox will look for more such projects — players with not only untapped upside, but tappable upside. If they can do that — find the next Duran or Campbell by marrying scouting work with instruction in the minor leagues — the potential payoff is immense.
“We’re essentially gambling, and the deeper you get into the draft, the more risk of the player not getting big league value,” said Pearson. “So it all comes down to development. You have to place bets on just certain specific development paths for the player, and everyone has to be on the same page.”
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.