Angels Cram for Free-Agent Draft

In the final hours before today’s free-agent draft, Angel executives stood at their batting cage early Sunday morning, watching a high school baseball player hit line drives.

Edison Field was quiet but for the sound of Scott Heard’s contact, crisp and loud. Heard is a left-handed-hitting catcher from San Diego Rancho Bernardo High and is among the high-profile hopefuls in baseball’s annual search for talent.

Being among the most needy in that regard, the Angel execs nodded solemnly at his swing, and nearly gasped at his powerful, accurate arm.

Scouting Director Donny Rowland was present, of course, as was General Manager Bill Stoneman and Player Development Director Darrell Miller. It was baseball’s version of cramming, one last look at a player who might help someday.

Widely regarded as having the most fallow farm system in the game, the Angels have two first-round selections, at 10 and 20, and a new management team whose focus is supposed to be scouting and development. They get their first significant shot at it over the next three days.

“I feel probably as good as I can feel in a year with such uncertainty,” Rowland said. “ I feel confident that we’ve done our homework on the players that we like, and on most of the players overall. You just don’t know who’s going to be there. I was talking to my wife when I first came home, and I said, ‘I don’t know who’s going to be there.’ She said, ‘Well, all you can do is take the best guy there when it’s your turn to pick, right?’ She’s got it all figured out. I ought to bring her over there with me.”

Hired in the off-season from the New York Yankees, Rowland brings an emphasis on a particular brand of player into the draft.

“Our focus, without any wavering in the plan, is to pump plus-tool-oriented, athletic, critical players into the organization,” Rowland said. “Pitchers with power arms. Premium position players, catchers, shortstops and center fielders. And left-handed pitching. We get players of high return and high value, and keep stockpiling, plugging those players into the system so that the depth of the system increases, the quality at the major-league level increases and we have players that other people want.”

Long considered among the nation’s hotbeds for talent, Orange County may have only one player drafted in the first three rounds.

Right-hander Adam Johnson, the ace of Cal State Fullerton’s pitching staff, is projected to be selected in the middle of the first round. Johnson, a junior, was 7-4 for the Titans with 166 strikeouts in 119 innings. He has a school-record 365 strikeouts in his career.

The next county player to go could be Brea Olinda High pitcher Mike Davern, but that might not be until the third round-or even later. Davern, a 6-foot-4 right-hander, was 7-2 this season with 111 strikeouts in 73 innings, but his stock has dropped some since the start of the season because of inconsistency and the fact he also has a scholarship agreement with UCLA.

The draft’s first two picks, by Florida and Minnesota, might both be high school players from Southern California. They are Heard and Matt Harrington, a 6-4 right-hander from Palmdale High. Matt Wheatland, a 6-5 right-hander, might give Rancho Bernardo two first-round picks if, as expected, he goes late in the first round.

The Angels reportedly might land catcher Dane Sardinha, who played last season for Pepperdine, and Justin Wayne, who pitched for Stanford.

Rowland said they won’t know until the draft unfolds.

“What it’s come down to is, what kind of return we [are] getting versus what kind of risk we assume,” Rowland said. “We assess each player the same way--what do we think he’s going to be, and what are the chances of him being that.”