A closer look at the O's draft preparations (with video)

Hired by the Orioles in 2013, Brad Ciolek is a young talent in the front office who has had to do some improvising the last couple of months.

Ciolek is supervisor, domestic scouting operations for the Orioles, who have the No. 2 pick in the First-Year Player Draft this Wednesday night. They have three of the first 39 picks and six selections in the five-round draft.

Time to add to that elite talent pipeline.

The O's could take Vanderbilt's Austin Martin or Texas A&M pitcher Asa Lacy with their top pick. Or go in another direction.

Through the years, hitters have been more successful than pitchers when it comes to the top selections in the draft.

"Historically speaking, there typically has been more success with position players," Ciolek said in a Zoom video interview Friday. "But Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal have been doing this a long time. They're not afraid to essentially look the other direction in regards to any specific player - position player or pitcher. I wouldn't say it would shy us away from taking a pitcher at number two. They keep everything open. Also, we're not afraid to potentially climb the ladder and take a high school player as well. They'll weigh every factor in the decision and pick the best player for the organization."

The pandemic, which caused the baseball shutdown in March, meant some of the top college players only played 15-20 games this season. Some top high school kids may not have played any.

On the Baseball America list of the top 500 prospects for this draft, nine of the top 20 are high school players. So how did the O's do their homework on a group of players they may not have seen on the field this year?

"We start our follow coverage about a week after the (previous) draft," Ciolek said. "There are events that start up for high school players. So, we do have a track record in scouting them extensively last summer. A lot of guys in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest may not have played any games. So that does add a twist to it. Typically, you have all spring to scout these guys. But we're going to have to go back off their track record of what we saw last summer and maybe for a few games this spring. We'll supplement that with video looks from scouts to see how these guys factor into this process. We have done extensive work on that demographic and we feel pretty good in assessing their abilities. We're prepared for every demographic on our draft board."

Before he made Adley Rutschman the No. 1 pick last June, Elias said he had important in-person meetings with all the top players he considered taking 1/1. While the pandemic kept the O's from doing that in recent months, Ciolek said the club's effort to get to know players, their character and makeup, has been thorough.

"That's extremely important throughout this entire process," he said. "We started that process last December. I went to numerous events in Atlanta and Florida and talked to players there. Mike and I also went out and traveled to talk to a handful of players in January and February. We've continued to have these conversations over Zoom. Talked to about 35 or 40 players in the last month this way.

"So, we don't take the makeup aspect lightly here. We make sure we do our due diligence. We make sure that they have the traits that we're looking for as far as being competitive, but also have the growth mindset of the work they need to put in to get to the next level. It's pretty interesting even what a 20-minute Zoom call can tell you about how guys are wired and what makes them tick. Ultimately, we are looking for those guys that despise losing and are wired the correct way so we can turn this around at all levels of our organization."

And then there is the analytic component for the Orioles. Since the 2019 draft concluded they've added five scouting analysts. The scouts provide their game reports and the scouting analysts look at large amounts of data.

"We have guys (as scouting analysts) that are very bright and have a background in scouting," said Ciolek. "It's kind of the best of both worlds. They are able to look through the scout lens and also the analytics lens. And weigh both of those to come to a conclusion on a player. It's definitely made a significant impact in our process.

"A lot of their work comes in handy in analyzing data sets that we get. Whether it's TrackMan data or batted-ball data from college or high school games or tournaments over the summer."

The analysts also develop models to make performance projections, attempting to predict what type of talent a player may become in the future.

"They work hand in hand with our analytics team and work on things like coming up with a model, and then we talk amongst ourselves as a group," Ciolek added. "We try to figure out - do we have concerns with this? Do we like guys as high as the model spits out or do we like them lower? It's a good conversation, a good dialogue. It gives a baseline to work from."

And when it comes time to draft next Wednesday night, another difference will be that the Orioles scouts and front office will not all be gathered in one draft room. They'll all be at their respective homes.

"It's going to be very similar to what the NFL did with their draft," Ciolek said. "We're essentially going to be drafting remote. All of our scouts will be at home and we'll all jump on a Zoom call. We'll have discussions in that Zoom call and ultimately put our board together that way."

Ciolek said the Orioles reached out to the Ravens and reps from other National Football League teams to get a sense of how the remote draft worked out for them in April.

The Orioles will make six selections in the draft next Wednesday and Thursday. Here are the selections and their bonus slots.

* Round 1, overall pick No. 2 has a slot value of $7,789,900.
* Competitive Balance Round A, No. 30 has a slot value of $2,365,500.
* Round 2, No. 39 has a slot value of $1,906,800.
* Round 3, No. 74 has a slot value of $844,200.
* Round 4, No. 103 has a slot value of $565,500.
* Round 5, No. 133 has a slot value of $422,300.

Here is the entire Zoom interview with Ciolek. It's worth your time and we covered a lot of ground on various aspects for the Orioles leading up to this draft.