Vancouver Sun

Welcome gift awaits Jays’ amateur boss

- ROB LONGLEY

At first glance, Shane Farrell was walking into an ideal situation when the Toronto Blue Jays hired him for the biggest job of his career.

Who wouldn’t want to be named director of amateur scouting for a team that as a welcoming gift has the fifth overall pick in the 2020 amateur draft?

Farrell is the son of former Jays manager, John.

So what’s it like being handed that responsibi­lity in a year where baseball at all levels has been shut down with nothing to scout?

“We have as much as everybody else, an even playing field,” Farrell said of the June draft during a Tuesday conference call.

“It’s going to be how we process that informatio­n. The common thought is that we only scout them at this time and that we’re only working with a four-week window when in reality some of these major schools, we’ve been watching them for years.

“We typically have a good grasp on the high school crop at the end of the summer because they’re all playing against their peers. We’re familiar with the group.

“We would have course love to have infinite time to scout and evaluate and get to know these guys but that’s just not the case this year.

“We’ll make do with what we have at the moment.”

Though the MLB draft generally doesn’t yield the same immediate return as the other North American sports the Jays find themselves in a prime position they haven’t found themselves in more than two decades. One of the rare benefits of last year’s miserable 67-95 campaign, it’s the first time they’ll have a top five pick since they took Vernon Wells at that spot in 1997.

“I’m optimistic about the player pool we have to select from,” Farrell said. “The attention to detail doesn’t change but the way we go about consuming informatio­n and collecting it will change. That’s the biggest take-away right now. We’re still working through contingenc­y plans through the remainder of the spring.”

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