Joe Christensen's Sunday Insider: Careful whom you pass on in baseball draft

I don't envy Twins scouting director Deron Johnson heading into Monday's amateur baseball draft.

He has some huge decisions on his shoulders, and this might be the most important draft in franchise history. The Twins have the No. 2 overall pick, and five of the first 72, at a time when the organization lacks talent, especially starting pitchers.

There's enormous pressure to find future impact players, and from all accounts, the talent pool in this year's draft is pretty shallow.

Johnson won't be alone in the Twins draft room, of course. General Manager Terry Ryan and vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff will be there, along with several of the team's other top scouts.

Ryan, Radcliff and the others can offer advice, but the responsibility for each pick is Johnson's. Most of the coverage will be focused on that No. 2 selection, but Johnson's next few decisions could be just as important.

In 2005, I got an inside look at the Twins' pre-draft scouting process and learned how tough these decisions can be. A few weeks before that year's draft, I rode along with then-scouting director Radcliff, then-Midwest scouting supervisor Joel Lepel and area scout Mark Wilson, as they drove to a pre-draft showcase in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

All 30 teams had scouts there watching dozens of players for about seven hours. The primary focus of everybody's attention was a high school pitcher from Des Moines named Jeremy Hellickson.

Hellickson was a 6-foot, 170-pound righthander -- small by major league standards -- with a pretty good fastball and curve. There was talk that he might be a first-rounder, but teams were really torn. He had a commitment to LSU and wanted a big signing bonus to turn pro.

He had shoulder injury as a junior, and Iowa's high school baseball season didn't start until two weeks before that year's draft, so this was one of the few chances scouts had to watch him that spring.

On draft day, the Twins wound up passing on Hellickson seven times before the Rays finally drafted him in the fourth round, with pick No. 118.

Like this year, the Twins had some extra compensation picks. They drafted Fresno State pitcher Matt Garza at No. 25, high school slugger Henry Sanchez at No. 39, high school shortstop Paul Kelly at No. 54, Winthrop pitcher Kevin Slowey at No. 73, high school shortstop Drew Thompson at No. 80, Nebraska pitcher Brian Duensing at No. 84, and Vanderbilt pitcher Ryan Mullins at No. 105.

"They had a great pitcher draft that year," said Baseball America's draft analyst John Manuel. "Garza, Slowey, Duensing -- that's a mother lode of pitching, but they haven't had a good pitcher draft since."

Meanwhile, Hellickson signed with Tampa Bay for $500,000 and blossomed into the 2011 American League Rookie of the Year. At 25, he's one of baseball's best young pitchers, at 21-11 with a 2.99 career ERA, even though his 91-mile-per hour fastball isn't overpowering.