Interest in draft picks up

Today, Epstein and Red Sox scouting personnel will hunker in front of at least 2,000 player reports. For months, fans could scour Internet messageboards and mock drafts. If they're curious about a player's personality, they can look at his Facebook page. Starting at 6 p.m. today, they can watch the draft live on the MLB Network.

Baseball's First-Year Player Draft has grown in profile and importance in recent years, for both followers and officials. The attention it draws pales compared with the NFL and NBA; only hardcore fans will have much of an opinion on the players the Red Sox select, and the success of their work will not be judged for years. But the attention is growing, and the Red Sox want it that way.

"We all think it's great," Epstein said. "The draft is such a central part of what we do as a baseball operation. That's true for all 30 clubs. It hasn't had the attention commensurate with that significant role that it plays.

"The more they can do to bring that attention to it, the better, I think, for the industry as a whole. If you look at the NFL, the NBA, drafts bring a lot of attention to those sports at a time when you might not have it."

Teams have figured out that baseball's salary structure makes drafting and developing players the most economically sound way to shape a roster, something the Red Sox have embraced. Once shortstop Jed Lowrie returns from the disabled list, nine of the 25 players on the active roster will have been drafted and developed by the organization.

"Five or six years ago, the fan on the street wanted to go tell you what superstar you should go trade for using all your prospects," Epstein said. "Then a couple years ago, they started telling you what superstars you should promote from Double A to Triple A to the big leagues. Now they want to tell you who to draft."

"We've noticed that there's been more attention paid to it," Red Sox director of amateur scouting Jason McLeod said. "For all of us, it drives us to want to continue it and make us that much better."

With the enhanced profile has come debate. Arguments exist about several topics - whether there should be a hard slotting system for salaries of players drafted, whether the draft should be held in the offseason - but the most pressing may be whether draft choices should be made into commodities. Teams are disallowed from trading draft choices, unlike the NFL and NBA. Several baseball officials have voiced an opinion to change the rule, and Epstein joined them.

"I think most people in the game would say it's something that they're in favor of, and we agree," Epstein said. "It seems that there have been other concerns at levels above our pay grade for why it hasn't happened. We certainly respect those. Perhaps it's something that can be opened again in the future. If they ask us, we'll certainly tell them that we're in favor of it."

The economic recession hovers over the draft this year. Epstein said he couldn't predict the economy's affect on the draft as a whole, but he said it would not affect the Red Sox.

"We're actually in pretty good shape because of the importance that we place and ownership places on the acquisition of amateur talent," Epstein said. "That will probably be the last thing to go for us, if we were ever to get into financial trouble.

"We just think it's such a fundamental element of building a successful franchise. We won't sacrifice that for anything, so we're going to have the resources we need to sign good players."

The enhanced information has led to more sophisticated analysis, which Epstein believes can inhibit successful scouting. Relying too heavily on new methods and not the "blocking and tackling of evaluating players," Epstein said, can lead to overthinking and mistakes.

The Red Sox base much of their evaluation on the makeup of a player. Epstein said a player's personality and work ethic are "more than half the equation," and McLeod said deciphering a prospect's makeup is "the hardest thing we do as scouts."

The Red Sox ask scouts to provide a two- or three-page essay about a player's background. Are his parents divorced? Does he look you in the eye when he shakes hands? What kind of home did he grow up in? Epstein prefers to personally meet with players he thinks the Red Sox might take with their earliest picks.

"Now you can go on a player's Facebook page and try to get some information that way," Epstein said. "There's just more information out there for the general public, which means we sort of have to go one level deeper to get information we need to separate ourselves from our competitors."

(The Red Sox have called a player before about information on his Facebook page. "He'll remain nameless, but he's in our organization," McLeod said, laughing.)

The emphasis on background surprised Epstein when he first participated in a major league draft. That hasn't changed, but almost everything surrounding the draft has, as the value of young players has become clearer.

"It's definitely moving in that direction, which is great," Epstein said. "I think for real baseball fans, there's nothing as sweet as following a kid from the day he's drafted and then seeing him play at the local minor affiliates, and then watching on TV as he makes his major league debut. You've been following his whole career. You feel invested in the player.

"Winning that way is sweeter for us as people in the front office, and I think it's sweeter for the fans, too. Not that this is the only way to do it or it's our goal to completely develop from within. It makes business sense. It makes baseball sense. It's pretty sweet for all involved."

Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe.com